This fact should be of particular concern to residents of Cape Town’s Milnerton, Table View and Melkbosstrand suburbs, which straddle a major fault line known as the Milnerton Fault. Scientists believe that this fault is due for another significant event.
At the time of the commemoration of the Milnerton quake, "Leadership Intelligence Bulletin" reported that “the rest of South Africa seems equally at risk of experiencing a fairly big earthquake event. Experts say large areas of the African continent are in an unstable, tectonically active state. The most immediate threat, nonetheless, seems to be centred in Cape Town.
"Predictions of an imminent 'big one' became more common after a minor earthquake measuring 3.1 on the Richter scale shook these parts in 2003.”
The day after the 1809 earthquake, people travelled from Cape Town to stare in awe at geysers of muddy water spurting upwards from schisms that had appeared in the earth. The epicentre was in the vicinity of Rietvlei, and the farmhouse at Jan Biesjes Kraal – which stood more or less where the Paddocks Shopping Centre is situated in current-day Milnerton Ridge – was flattened.
The Milnerton Fault runs eight kilometres offshore near Koeberg Nuclear Power Station, through Table View and Milnerton, and on to the Cape Flats and part of False Bay.
Further northeast of Cape Town, a major earthquake in 1969 destroyed many buildings in the towns of Tulbagh and Ceres.
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