It was 10.27am on Thursday, December 28, 1989, when the apparently unthinkable happened in the NSW city of Newcastle.
An earthquake with the substantial magnitude of 5.6 on the Richter scale shook Newcastle and some of its surrounding areas to their core.
The epicentre of the quake was approximately 15km south-west of the city’s CBD, near Boolaroo, and the focus was calculated to be at a depth of around 11km.
The effects were felt over an area of about 200,000 sq km, with isolated reports of shaking felt up to 800 km from Newcastle.
Damage to buildings and facilities occurred over a 9000 sq. km region, an area equivalent to over 160 times the size of the Sydney Harbour
Within seconds of the quake, long stretches of Newcastle and Hamilton looked like war zones.
The collapse of the Newcastle Workers Club took nine lives. Three people died under collapsed awnings along Beaumont Street in Hamilton. A tenth person died in hospital of shock.
An estimated 300,000 people were affected and 1,000 were left homeless following the earthquake. 50,000 buildings were damaged – approximately 35,000 were residential homes – and 300 buildings were demolished.
The city was left with a damaged bill of more than $4 billion.
If the earthquake had happened later in the evening, the number of casualties could have been much higher as thousands of people were expected to attend a Split Enz concert at the Newcastle Workers Club.
It was also fortunate that, being a few days after Christmas, many heavily damaged education facilities were unoccupied at the time of the earthquake.
