Victoria earthquake live updates: reports of damage in Melbourne after tremor felt across south-east Australia

Jamie Kronborg, who works for federal Indi MP Helen Haines as a media spokesperson, was sitting in their first floor office in Faithfull St Wangaratta.

Jamie’s partner Peter Kenyon was in the butcher shop at Beechworth and the power went off in that town. A couple of shelves in the butchery rattled to the floor.

Robert Reeves and his partner Kaye Dyson live in the village of Merrijig, about 15 minutes away from Mansfield.

He said when the first quake struck at 9.15am, the building went into a “really intense rattle”.

It was followed by a second more mild quake about 15 minutes later.

Dr Januka Attanayake, the research lead with the University of Melbourne’s Earthquake Seismology Earth Sciences unit, said preliminary estimates had the earthquake as a magnitude 5.8 to 6.0.

“If these preliminary estimates are correct, it is probably the largest earthquake we have felt around Melbourne in the last 175 to 200 years,” Attanayake said. “If it’s a magnitude 6.0, it’s the first in hundreds of years. This is the first earthquake of this magnitude I have seen here during my lifetime, and it has probably not been seen during the lifetime of several generations.

“We record about 400 earthquakes less than magnitude 2.5 every year,” he said. “So earthquakes are not an exception.”

Usually Attanayake and his team would put out more seismometers in the aftermath to try and detect aftershocks, which can last for months, but due to Covid-19 travel and work restrictions this was not possible, he said. Two significant aftershocks of 2.5 and 3.0 have already been detected by existing seismometers.

“It’s important work because if we can detect aftershocks we can detect the fault area that ruptured,” he said. “We need to know this information for proper future hazard analysis. It helps us detect expected ground motions of earthquakes going forward. This is essential information for engineers building city structures in future, as we can for example say how much ground motion can be expected at a given location over the next 50 years.”

Scott Morrison has just addressed travelling reporters in Washington about the earthquake.

He says the reports he’s seen to date don’t point to “serious injuries or things of that nature” and that is “very welcome news”.

He said Emergency Management Australia is liaising with state authorities, and the acting prime minister Barnaby Joyce is keeping him informed.

The federal government is ready to “to provide whatever assistance is needed, whether from the ADF or others”.

He said anyone in distress in Melbourne or beyond will be “well looked after”.

Morrison also said he’s been in contact with the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews.

Mansfield Rudolf Steiner School and Kindergarten administrator Maisie Pilli was standing with her co-worker when she heard a “loud crash”.

“To me it sounded like a truck was going to crash into the building, and it wasn’t until me and my co-worker looked at each other and thought it was an earthquake that we ran to a doorway and stood there together,” she said.

Pilli felt the tremor for about 30 to 45 seconds, and was relieved the kindergarteners were off on school holidays.

“Everything was fairly sturdy, we didn’t see any damage, but we had a look around afterwards and nothing went too far off the shelves, the only thing we saw outside was a few water-tanks shaking,” she said.

Pilli said all Mansfield community noticeboards were “going off the charts”, with most people having had a similar experience.

“One of my friends with horses says all the horses went crazy and weren’t enjoying it,” she laughed.

“My poor dog’s at home and I know she’ll be thinking ‘what’s going on’?

“We really weren’t prepared for it being in our location, I think we’d jump under desks instead of a doorway next time.”