'It felt like a major quake'

2006-01-24 22:28

Carina van Wyk

Johannesburg - Beds "jumped around" and one woman even thought she was going to drown.

That was after a temblor that was felt as far away as Rosebank, shook the East Rand about 11:15 on Tuesday.

"I was having a bath. I thought I was drowning. There was even a sort of after-shock," said Mathilda Bezuidenhout from Parkrand in Boksburg shortly after the temblor.

A resident from Jansenpark, also in Boksburg, said he was lying on his bed when the earth started moving. "I could feel the bed jump around," he said.

Ian Saunders, a project leader for the national seismographical network at the Council for Geo-Sciences, said preliminary tests indicated that the epicentre of the temblor was at the East Rand mining area in the Boksburg-Germiston area.

He didn't want to say whether the temblor was related to mining activities.

James Duncan, spokesperson for ERPM mine on the East Rand, said the temblor had caused no damage in the mine and that nobody had been injured.

Sugan Moodley, spokesperson for the Ekurhuleni emergency services, said they had received no calls from anybody who had been injured in the temblor.

"But it felt like a big earthquake," said Moodley, who was in Bedfordview at the time.

- Beeld