Tremor mystery solved
BRYANSTON - The mysterious tremors shaking some tenants at Grosvenor Crossing shopping centre in Bryanston have at last been explained, roughly 16 months after they began.
Love Hair, a hair salon in the centre, was by far the worst affected of the tenants. The regular shuddering underfoot, last featured in Grosvenor Crossing tremors continue, was enough to make mirrors, chandeliers and shelves rattle and cause stress to customers. Broll Property Group, the property company that own and manage the centre, commissioned engineers to investigate. They also queried the city council about water reticulation in the area, to no avail.
After the Chronicle ran a series of stories on the unexplained phenomenon, some employees from businesses in the area and residents living nearby reported that they had also felt some shuddering, although not on the same scale as the tremors experienced by Love Hair. It can now be safely assumed that these reports were either unrelated or were imagined, as the staff of Love Hair have found the answer.
Two shops down from Love Hair is a laundromat called The Laundry Room, which has been operating for the past 16 months. The tremors match the frequency, rhythm and duration of their machines. The tremors can be felt only slightly in the laundromat but were amplified in Love Hair’s shop, likely due to the structural design of the building.
Owner of The Laundry Room, Steven Bate, said he was surprised to learn that it was his machines that were responsible, especially since the tremors felt in his store were almost unnoticeable.
In 2012 a resident, who claimed to be a tremor isolation specialist, called the Chronicle to ask whether a laundromat had been considered, since the tremors came in intervals and would often last the approximate length of a spin cycle. This simple explanation didn’t seem likely at the time since people in separate buildings, some as far as a kilometre away, also claimed to be affected.
Regardless, Dean Botes of Love Hair said they will soon be relocating to a new premises near the Virgin Active in Bryanston. He said, “We joked about it for as long as we could but it really was bad for business.”
To read more on the tremor saga, see here, here, here and here.
