Cleethorpes gets all shook up... by earthquake

A 3.9 magnitude earthquake which shook houses and woke families, was felt 140 miles from its epicentre.

The quake orginated 11 miles under the River Humber close to Grimsby and Cleethorpes and lasted almost a minute.

It was felt across North Lincolnshire, East Yorkshire and as far away as Birmingham, just before 11.15pm on Saturday. Lynne Currie, from Cleethorpes, said: “I felt the floor shudder in my second-floor flat”.

And Thomas Gale also in the seaside resort said: “My whole bedroom shook.”

Another resident said: “I was watching TV when there was this big shudder and I thought something had come through the front door. It was a bit of a shock.”

It was the largest to hit the area since 2008, when a quake measuring 5.2 struck the region and damged buildings.

Glen Ford, from the British Geological survey, said: “It is of the size we would expect people to start reporting it to us. But one 10 years ago at Market Rasen, 30km from this, was 90 times bigger.”

The European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre said aftershocks, or even a second quake, were likely.

The largest recorded British quake was in 1931. The 6.1 tremor near Dogger Bank in the North Sea damaged buildings.