‘I believed a airplane had crashed’ – survivor of Lancashire earthquake particulars horror
A small village in Lancashire has had six earthquakes in six weeks but – despite the unusual frequency of the events – residents are not overly concerned, one survivor opened up
The small village of Silverdale has had six eathquakes in six weeks(Image: PA)
It may sound unusual but a small village in Lancashire has witnessed a staggering six earthquakes in just over six weeks with one so loud residents thought a plane had crashed.
Silverdale sits on the coast of Morecombe Bay near the border with Cumbria and has been the epicentre of six earthquakes – the first on December 3 and the latest on January 13.
The earthquakes have all been at a depth of 3km and the first, which was also the biggest, was magnitude 3.2. For context, the huge quake which caused a devastating tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004, was magnitude 9.2.
The last earthquake of this magnitude in the Morecambe Bay area was at Grange-over-Sands in 1993 but nobody in Silverdale could remember one before the recent spate of them. David Spencer, who has lived in the village with his wife since 1992, thought a plane had crashed, such was the sound of the bang.
He said: “It sounded like a building had collapsed; at first I thought a plane had crashed I was still up and it sounded very close, maybe a few metres from the house.” A bewildered David, along with many others in Silverdale, armed himself with a torch went outside to investigate. But there was nothing to see.
He added: “I came back inside and went online, as you do, and it was actually an earthquake monitoring station in the US which I came across as they’d picked it up.” David even walked along the lane to check a nearby building which is due to be demolished.
“I thought maybe the roof had fallen off,” he added. Despite the spate of earthquakes nobody in Silverdale is unduly concerned.
Shelley who works at the Silverdale Hotel said: “I know there’s been a few in a short space of time but I’m not worried. The biggest one I heard a really loud rumble and it sounded like someone had hit the house.
“My husband and son went out with torches. Because we’ve never had one like that before we didn’t know what an earthquake felt like so nobody knew what had happened.”
Although noticeable earthquakes are rare in the UK the British Geological Society (BGS) says that, on average, there will be one of magnitude of 3.7 or greater once a year, one of 4.7 or greater every 10 years and one of 5.6 or greater every century. Moreover, Britain is far from any plate boundaries which typically cause the most significant earthquakes we are still being squeezed by the motion of the Earth’s tectonic plates.
Northern Britain is also still being uplifted due to the melting of the ice sheets that covered many parts of Britain thousands of years ago which results in occasional earthquakes. The most recent large earthquake in the UK was in 2008 in Lincolnshire at 1am on February 27.
It registered as a magnitude 5.2 and lasted for around two minutes. The BGS says that historical tectonic episodes, such as that which led to the formation of the supercontinent Pangaea, resulted in a complex system of hundreds of faults across Britain which means that earthquakes are more common than people realise.
As of mid-December, the BGS had seen 309 earthquakes recorded across the UK in 2025, with the largest in England occurring in Silverdale on December 3 measuring at 3.2 magnitude. Jeanne and Stephen Holden, whose home sits directly above the epicentre of one of last year’s earthquakes, don’t believe the recent seismic activity will have any material impact on their lives.
“I can’t see it affecting our house insurance for instance,” Stephen said. “Earthquakes happen all the time it’s just that we never usually notice.”
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