Muscat: Many Salalah residents took to the social media on Friday and shared their experience of ‘a strong sound that they heard in the morning, accompanied by a slight tremor.’
Twitter was agog with some taking the news seriously and others poking fun at it. Some on social media had doubted if it was an earthquake. The news was reported in some of the local online media.
However, the Oman’s Earthquake Monitoring Centre at Sultan Qaboos University (EMCSQ) did not report any earthquakes on that day at that time anywhere near the area.
EMCSQ, Oman’s premier quake monitoring station, has systems that monitor and report real time incidents of earthquakes of any intensity anywhere around the globe on a 24/7 basis.
The centre confirmed that no earthquake was recorded on September 3, in any of the governorates of the Sultanate. It also indicated that what citizens have shared has nothing to do with earthquakes, and could be due to something else.
It may be noted that minor quakes are reported quite often in the region offshore Salalah in Arabian Sea. EMCSQ, reported as recently as on September 1 an earthquake of 3.3 magnitude off shore Salalah in Arabian Sea.
