Earthquake in Maine rattles New England states

Oct. 17, 2012 PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Patrons of a pizza par­lor near the epi­cen­ter of an earth­quake in south­ern Maine may not have known what was hap­pen­ing. But the shak­ing build­ing was enough to send all 20 of them skedad­dling outside.

“It was loud­est bang you ever heard in your life. We actu­ally thought it was an explo­sion of some type,” said Jes­sica Hill, owner of Water­boro House of Pizza. “The back door and door to the base­ment blew open,” she said.

The earth­quake that hit south­ern Maine Tues­day night and was felt in New Eng­land states as far away as Con­necti­cut caused no appar­ent dam­age or injuries, but it rat­tled res­i­dents through­out the region.

The U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey said the 4.0 mag­ni­tude quake hit around 7:12 p.m. and its epi­cen­ter, about 3 miles west of Hol­lis Cen­ter, Maine, was about 3 miles deep. That loca­tion is about 20 miles west of Port­land. The quake was first esti­mated to be 4.6 mag­ni­tude but was later downgraded.

In Saco, Sue Hadi­aris said, “The whole house shook. …It was very unnerv­ing because you could feel the floor shak­ing. There was a queasy feeling.”

After­ward, Hadi­aris called her 15-year-old niece in Fal­mouth to make sure she was safe. “She said, ‘We can cross that off our bucket list. We’ve lived through an earth­quake,’” Hadi­aris said.

Earth­quakes are rare in New Eng­land but they’re not unheard of.

In 2006 there was a series of earth­quakes around Maine’s Aca­dia National Park. The strongest earth­quake recorded in Maine occurred in 1904 in the East­port area, near the state’s east­ern bor­der with Canada accord­ing to the Weston Obser­va­tory at Boston Col­lege. It had an esti­mated mag­ni­tude of 5.7 to 5.9.

The Seabrook Sta­tion nuclear plant, about 63 miles away in New Hamp­shire, declared an unusual event — the low­est of four emer­gency clas­si­fi­ca­tions — but said it was not affected. The plant has been offline for refueling.

“There has been no impact at all to the plant from the earth­quake and our refu­el­ing main­te­nance activ­i­ties have not been affected,” said Alan Grif­fith, spokesman for Next Ener­gy­Era Seabrook Station.

Jim Van Don­gen, pub­lic infor­ma­tion offi­cer for the New Hamp­shire Depart­ment of Safety said New Hamp­shire 911 got about 1,000 calls in the first hour after the quake, but they later dropped off. He said no major dam­age was reported.

Brief, but notice­able shak­ing was felt in down­town Boston and the sur­round­ing area.

Edward Conti, who lives in a four-story apart­ment build­ing in Cam­bridge, Mass., he was watch­ing tele­vi­sion when “it sounded like a car crash. Then there was another boom-boom. It was no small thing.” Conti said there was no damage.

In Mel­rose, just north of Boston, Peter Ward said the shak­ing he felt seemed to last about four sec­onds. “It felt like a big gust of wind shak­ing the house. I don’t want to over­state it, but the glass did rat­tle a lit­tle,” he said.

Lynette Miller, a spokes­woman for the Maine Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency, said her dogs started bark­ing sev­eral sec­onds before the quake on Tues­day. “It was sev­eral sec­onds of good shak­ing but noth­ing falling down,” Miller said from her home in Read­field, about 60 miles north of Portland.

In Port­land, Abbie Miller had just turned on the aging fur­nace in her house for the first time this sea­son. “An hour later, things started shak­ing and it sounded almost like a train com­ing through. I thought my fur­nace was going to blow,” she said.

East Coast quakes are rarely strong enough to be felt over a wide area. A quake of mag­ni­tude 5.8 on Aug. 23, 2011, was cen­tered in Vir­ginia and felt all along the coast, includ­ing in New York City and Boston. Experts say the region’s geol­ogy can make the effects felt in an area up to 10 times larger than quakes of sim­i­lar size on the West Coast.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Oct 17 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.