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Message: <blockquote data-quote="lkdood" data-source="post: 7307438" data-attributes="member: 92282">The biggest earthquake in 50 years struck Western Australia's Goldfields  region on Tuesday, damaging buildings and closing the massive "Super  Pit" gold mine, officials said.Hundreds of workers were  evacuated from the vast open-cast facility, the area's biggest employer,  and the underground Mount Charlotte operation after the 5.0-magnitude  quake hit just outside the Kalgoorlie-Boulder mining towns.But  nobody was reported hurt in the quake, which left some streets littered  with bricks from damaged buildings and rattled residents at around 08:17  (00:17 GMT)."It was going for about a good 20 seconds and we've  felt several aftershocks, so we might not be in the clear yet," said  Kalgoorlie Miner newspaper journalist Nick Rynne.Police cordoned  off parts of Boulder, a remote town about 600km east of Perth, and mine  operator KCGM said Super Pit and Mount Charlotte would be closed for  several hours.Worst"The evacuation is purely a  precautionary measure," said a spokesperson. "We haven't sustained any  damage and all personnel are safe."But we do have our  geotechnical team there at the moment, assessing the situation."Emergency  officials were unable immediately to confirm reports that schools and a  hospital were evacuated and that a damaged house caught fire after the  earthquake."If there was structural damage to a building the  people inside would probably have been brought out," a Fire and  Emergency Services Authority spokesperson said.Residents also  said holes had appeared in some roads. The worst-hit buildings were  historic structures in the centre of Boulder, which sprang up in the  wake of Australia's 1800s Gold Rush."We're living in this big  mining area. There's a big hole here and there's underground tunnels  everywhere," said local resident Annie Fowler.A spokesperson for  Geoscience Australia said the quake, at a shallow depth of just 10km,  was the worst seen in the remote region for at least half-a-century."This  is quite a large earthquake for Australia and a shallow, potentially  damaging, earthquake," he said. "It's the largest event in this area in  the last 50 years."USGS measured the quake at 5.2 but Geoscience  Australia pitched it as a magnitude 5.0 and said it would have been  felt within a 168km radius.AFP</blockquote>

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