While many of the temporarily homeless stayed with friends and relatives, some 10 people slept in the Salvation Army rest centre over the weekend.

Sarah Smith, spokesperson for Shepway District Council, said yesterday: "So far, 73 buildings have been deemed as not being safe to return to in the short term. Two families stayed overnight in the Salvation Army rest centre, and two other families stayed in a Travelodge." She said that those families would be rehoused in temporary accommodation or a hotel.

One family of eight were waiting to return home yesterday. "The whole front of our house has bent and cracked," Luljeta Juniku, aged 18, who has five brothers and sisters, said. "Crews are assessing the damage and putting up scaffolding. We all just want to get back to normal."

Structural engineers and surveyors continued to work all yesterday assessing the damage to properties, while three roads in Folkestone remained closed.

Harvey Grammar School for Boys, which has 900 pupils, will remain closed today as surveyors assess collapsed ceilings and cracks in the walls. Head teacher Keith Rivers said: "At worst, half of the building will be unusable for months." Only one person, a 30-year-old woman, was injured in the earthquake, the ambulance service said. She sustained minor injuries to her head.

Vic Thorogood, a firefighter, rescued his own children from dense black smoke and soot when their house was hit. "I felt a huge rumble which was followed by an enormous blast of smoke and ash. I rushed to the living room where the two children were. It had become completely filled with black soot. I dragged the children to safety."

The damage to properties is expected to cost some £10m pounds. Malcolm Tarling, of the Association of British Insurers, said: "The last serious earthquake that struck Britain in Dudley resulted in a bill of around £15m to £20m."

Michael Howard, Conservative MP for Folkestone and Hythe, said the community escaped relatively unscathed.

"There is a fair amount of damage, a lot of chimney stacks down and it is tough on all those people who weren't able to spend the night at home," he said. "But when you consider there were no serious injuries and no real devastating damage to property, I think we have got off remarkably lightly."

Meanwhile, the Marine and Coastguard Agency said a 1,000m-long, six inch-wide crack, which appeared in a seaside cliff-top almost 150 miles away in Hampshire could have been triggered by the quake. A row of beach huts below the cliff face in Barton-on-Sea was evacuated amid fears of a huge landslide.