Some residents were rattled while others barely noticed as a small earthquake shook LaFayette, Ga., Tuesday.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, a quake registering 2.6 magnitude rattled the Walker County town about 7:20 a.m.
City Public Safety Director Tommy Freeman said he received several calls from residents, but no damage was reported.
“It sounded like a heavy truck coming down the street and then the building just shook a tad and then it was over,” he said.
Manager Thomasina Davis said the Hardee’s on North Main Street was busy at the time of the quake, but no one noticed any tremors.
“I didn’t hear anything about an earthquake,” she said Tuesday afternoon.
Don Blakeman, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Earthquake Information Center, said the quake likely was “a release of some local stress between two rocks.” Usually quakes of that magnitude feel like a sudden jolt rather than a sustained tremble, he said.
“Georgia and Tennessee are not seismically active like California or Alaska,” he said. “But they do experience a few small quakes.”
State Geologist James Kennedy said Walker County is riddled with small, unnamed fractures — known as faults — in the Earth’s crust. U.S. Geological Survey maps show records of four earthquakes in Walker-Dade County area between 1990 and 2006.
“It’s not like there is a fault every foot, but there multiple faults in the area,” Dr. Kennedy said.
Quakes are not terribly unusual in Georgia, according to Dr. Kennedy.
The good news?
“They’re always small,” the geologist said.
What is a 2.6?
Tuesday’s earthquake was a 2.6 on the Richter scale, categorizing it as a very minor earthquake. The magnitude of an earthquake is determined by the amplitude of waves recorded by seismographs. The difference between the measurements are logarithmic, meaning a 4.0 is not twice but 20 times as strong as a 2.0 tremor.
Source: www.earthquake.usgs.gov