A 5.1 magnitude earthquake rocked North Carolina Sunday after a chain of smaller quakes had jolted parts of the state late Saturday and early Sunday.
The 8:07 a.m. earthquake was centered near the town of Sparta, about 90 miles north of Charlotte in the north-central part of the state near the border with Virginia, said Randy Baldwin, a geophysicist with the National Earthquake Information Center in Colorado, according to the Raleigh News & Observer. The quake was felt all across the state, and beyond.
“The information center received more than 6,000 reports of the earthquake in a 200-mile radius that touches seven states,” he said.
The quake was the strongest to hit North Carolina since a 1916 earthquake that registered 5.2 on the scale, the News & Observer reported.
Immediate reports of damage included cracks in pavement, facades on homes losing bricks or stones, or items falling from store shelves.
No immediate reports of injuries were received.
”You knew right away it was an earthquake. There was no question about it,” said Shari Carricker, according to the Charlotte Observer.
“We have no damage, except the coffee in my husband’s coffee cup sloshed out,” she said. “But it was scary. Really, really scary,” she said.
Many tweeted about the impacts or shared photos of damage.
Callie Carson was cooking in a 27-foot camper when everything started to shake.
“It was kind of unnerving,” she told the News & Observer. “My husband and I looked at each other and said, ‘Was that an earthquake?’”
“There is no way there was an earthquake up here. That’s just not logical,” she said. “2020 has defied all innate logic, so why not an earthquake? Why not?”
Baldwin said the Appalachian mountains are old, but that does not mean they are never active.
“They are old mountains,” Baldwin told the News & Observer. “They were formed a long time ago by faulting. And these faults … they get reactivated every now and again. The stresses build up and reactivate some of these old faults.”
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