Earth Tremors Shake Lancashire

Two earthquakes have been recorded off the coast of Lancashire, according to the British Geological Survey.

Blackpool resident Cathy Welsh told the BBC; "I looked round and the bed was shaking. I thought it was a big lorry going past."

The strongest tremor had a magnitude of 3.3 on the Richter scale, with the epicentre off the coast of Blackpool at a depth of 5km.

An earlier earthquake had a magnitude of 2.4 and was 3km deep. Its epicentre was about 25km west of Fleetwood and tremors were felt in Fleetwood and Barrow-in-Furness, the British Geological Survey said.

No injuries have been reported.

People took to Twitter saying they felt the ground move beneath them, particularly in the north-west of England.

Glen Ford from the British Geological Survey said it could have been "quite alarming" for anyone who felt the earthquakes.

"Not many people experience earthquakes in the UK," he told the BBC.

"There are only two or three of them a year of that size."

In 2011, a drilling operation for natural shale gas in Lancashire was suspended following a second earthquake in the area that may have been triggered by the process.

The 2011 earthquake near Blackpool occurred at the same time that the energy company Cuadrilla Resources was injecting fluids under high pressure deep underground to blast apart the gas-bearing rock - a process known as fracking.

"It is highly probable that the hydraulic fracturing of Cuadrilla's Preese Hall-1 well did trigger a number of minor seismic events," Cuadrilla admitted at the time.