An earthquake registering 2.6 magnitude rattled LaFayette, Ga., around 7:20 a.m. today, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
City Public Safety Director Tommy Freeman said he had gotten several calls from residents, but no damage has been 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.
Don Blakeman, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Earthquake Information Center said the quake was likely “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 in the Earth’s crust called faults. U.S.G.S. maps show records of four earthquakes in Walker-Dade County area from 1990 to 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. Sandersville and Milledgeville felt the ground shake in 2009.
The good news?
“They’re always small,” the geologist said.