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'A good rumble:' 4.1 magnitude earthquake rattles Esterhazy area Thursday evening

The 4.1 magnitude quake was centred approximately 17 kilometres east of Esterhazy.

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Les Salkeld immediately knew an earthquake was happening when he felt the ground rumble underneath him Thursday evening.

“They’re common,” he said.

Salkeld was in his trailer home in the village of Gerald — approximately 245 kilometres east of Regina — around 8:30 Thursday when the earth shook.

According to the US Geological Survey, the 4.1 magnitude quake was centred about 17 kilometres east of Esterhazy and had a depth of about five kilometres.

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Salkheld said the epicentre was right under his house.

“It was a good rumble,” he said. “It was one of the better ones.”

Other than his power being out for a couple of hours, he said his home didn’t suffer any damage.

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Salkeld said many people mistake earthquakes in the area for passing trains and don’t often feel them because they’re very small.

The quake was also felt in nearby Esterhazy.

“There were some individuals that said they felt a little bit of a shake,” said Esterhazy Mayor Grant Forster Friday morning. “But … we didn’t see anything in terms of damage.”

Forster said Esterhazy doesn’t have a specific contingency plan — other than its regular emergency management operations plan — in the event of a larger seismic event.

He said the only noticeable thing the earthquake produced in town was the loss of power.

SaskPower spokesperson Joel Cherry confirmed that the power was out in the area from shortly after 8:30 to around 10:35 Thursday evening. He said around 8,400 customers were affected.

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Location of a power outage that was the result of an earthquake near Esterhazy Thursday evening. Image courtesy Les Salkeld/SaskPower
Location of a power outage that was the result of an earthquake near Esterhazy Thursday evening. Image courtesy Les Salkeld/SaskPower jpg

Cherry said the loss of power originated from a gas relay — a device used to detect gas leaks or pressure changes — at SaskPower’s switching station near Tantallon, about 30 kilometres southeast of Esterhazy.

“When the vibration from the earthquake happened, basically the gas relays tripped off,” said Cherry. “So that turned the power off.”

He said three of the four transformers were tripped as a result. The system is then locked out when this occurs so that it isn’t re-energized in case there’s a gas leak or other serious incident.

“We have to get out there, visually inspect it … and then manually reset it to get the power going again,” said Cherry, adding there was no damage reported by inspection crews.

The quake’s epicentre was very close to Mosaic’s K2 Potash Mine. Mosaic spokesperson Sarah Fedorchuk confirmed the mine suffered a loss of power for a couple of hours and the approximately 120 employees in the mine at the time were mustered and accounted for.

Mosaic’s K2 potash mine east of Esterhazy. The mine suffered a loss of power for about two hours after a 4.1 magnitude earthquake struck the area Thursday evening.
Mosaic’s K2 potash mine east of Esterhazy. The mine suffered a loss of power for about two hours after a 4.1 magnitude earthquake struck the area Thursday evening. Photo by Greg Pender /Saskatoon StarPhoenix

Fedorchuk said there was no damage from the quake and no major impact to the site’s operations even though work had to be stopped during the outage.

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Alison Bird, an earthquake seismologist with the Geological Survey of Canada, said the area of the province sees a few small earthquakes every year. While Saskatchewan doesn’t fall on any fault lines, Bird said mines in the area are one likely cause for the tremors.

“You’re removing rocks, so sometimes if you remove rock from an area … it could collapse,” she said. “There have been some collapses occasionally in that area in older parts of the mine.”

Rain, said Bird, can also cause quakes by lubricating fissures in the ground around the mine.

But mining isn’t the only cause. Bird said post glacial rebounds — the rising of land masses following the removal of ice sheets from thousands of years prior — can cause the earth’s crust to fluctuate, setting off tremors.

While the quake jolted some, most had a sense of humour about the whole incident. Some even took to social media to mock the very small toll the quake took on the area. One Saskatoon radio station posted a photo of a tipped over garbage can with the phrase “We will rebuild” underneath.

Another social media user posted photos of the area that were supposedly supposed to show the aftermath of the quake — but instead showed peaceful, undamaged structures and roads — with the caption “Don’t send what you SHOULD, send what you CAN!”

Some residents took to social media to mock the low magnitude of an earthquake that struck near Esterhazy Thursday evening. Image courtesy Les Salkeld/Tom Landine/Facebook
Some residents took to social media to mock the low magnitude of an earthquake that struck near Esterhazy Thursday evening. Image courtesy Les Salkeld/Tom Landine/Facebook jpg

Previous earthquakes in that area of the province of a similar size include a 3.8 magnitude quake centred 32 kilometres southeast of Yorkton in September of 2016 and a 3.7 magnitude quake that struck six kilometres outside of Esterhazy in March of 1988.

The strongest earthquake felt in Saskatchewan was in May of 1909, when a 90 second, 5.5 magnitude quake rattled the southern portion of the province causing minor infrastructure damage.

ewilliams@postmedia.com

twitter.com/EWilliams_LP

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