A relatively rare East Coast earthquake centered just northeast of South Carolina's capital city jolted large numbers of state residents awake, rocking the Southern state at a preliminary 3.3 magnitude, authorities say.
COLUMBIA, S.C. — A relatively rare East Coast earthquake centered just northeast of South Carolina’s capital city jolted large numbers of state residents awake early Monday, rocking the Southern state at a preliminary 3.3 magnitude, authorities said.The pre-dawn temblor lasted only seconds but hundreds of people took to social media to describe being shaken from sleep when the quake hit shortly after 1:30 a.m.
“There’s definitely been a ‘swarm’ here over the past several months. It’s not like a swarm like after a large seismic event but we have had a number of them in recent months,” geophysicist Amy Vaughan with the 24-hour monitoring service told The Associated Press by phone.Vaughan said the 3.3 magnitude is an early assessment and could change, adding the quake had an epicenter of about 1.5 miles below the earth’s surface near the community of Elgin.
Those awakened reported feeling the earth shaking for several seconds and some even described what sounded like a heavy truck moving nearby. Vaughan said only an hour afterward she had reports pouring in to the quake monitoring center. “I have not heard of any damage reports so far but have had over a thousand ... reports,” she said. “If people were sleeping they obviously would have been woken up and things might have been rattling off shelves or countertops but not the kind of shaking or intensity to cause damage of any significance.”
Still, she called it “alarming for sure” and said some lesser aftershocks were possible in coming days or weeks. She noted there were quakes of a preliminary 2.0 or higher in April and March and others
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