A number of buildings had to be evacuated in Stilfontein in the North West on Wednesday after an earth tremor preliminarily measuring five on the Richter scale.
Emergency services in nearby Klerksdorp, about 200km south-west of Johannesburg, rushed to Stilfontein after several reports of damaged buildings were received.
Spokesperson Mesh Letanta said an entire block of flats housing elderly people had to be evacuated after the building was severely damaged.
”It is no longer fit for human habitation,” he said.
Two high schools in the mining town were also evacuated as the walls were damaged.
He said by early Wednesday afternoon emergency services had received a report of only one minor injury.
The tremor was also felt strongly in Klerksdorp.
”It happened just before half past twelve,” Klerksdorp resident Christa Gouws told the Mail & Guardian Online. ”It felt very bad … things were falling off the shelves.”
She added: ”It felt like it went on for half an hour, but it must have been about 10 seconds.”
She said she had heard a report of a man in Stilfontein who had been watching television when the tremor struck and threw his TV set on to the floor.
Thirteen miners injured
About 3 200 miners at DRDGold’s operations near Stilfontein were being evacuated early on Wednesday afternoon after the tremor.
”Our main priority now is to bring people back to safety and to the surface,” said DRDGold spokesperson James Duncan.
He said 13 miners who were injured were being treated at the scene.
”The mines emergency services were deployed to the miners underground. It is easier for the paramedics to go down and treat the miners right now. We don’t know the extent of their injuries,” Duncan said.
He said DRDGold’s North West operations comprise eight shafts in the Stilfontein area.
Duncan said the mines have ”seismic monitoring systems that monitor on an ongoing basis. This seismic monitoring system picks up over quite a large area in the mining area and beyond.”
He said the system registered four ”fairly large events between 12.15pm and 12.22pm”.
”We are still pinpointing the exact magnitudes. There were a number of smallish events afterwards.”
There have been reports of damage underground, ”but it is really too early to determine the extent of the damage at this stage”.
Anglo American spokesperson Andries van Zyl said that while the company is aware of the seismic event, it appears that its operations have not been affected.
The tremor’s epicentre is believed to have been around Klerksdorp, said Ian Saunders, project leader of the South African National Seismograph Network at the Council for Geoscience in Pretoria.
He said such a measure is ”quite serious” for South Africa, which is an aseismic country (not prone to earthquakes).
”It’s rather early to say anything,” said Saunders.
He said the largest earthquake to have hit South Africa — in Ceres in the Western Cape in 1969 — measured 6,1 on the Richter scale.
It is not yet known whether the Klerksdorp quake was related to mining or due to natural causes.
The tremor was felt as far as Johannesburg.