East Coast quake felt in southern Maine

SOUTHERN MAINE — A magnitude 5.9 earthquake centered in Virginia, strong enough to temporarily close Newark and JFK airports, was felt across southern Maine Tuesday, Aug. 23.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the epicenter of the quake, which struck at 1:51 p.m., was 27 miles east of Charlottesville, Va., at a depth of 0.6 miles. The quake was reportedly strong enough to make skyscrapers sway in New York City, knock stones from the façade of the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., and prompt the evacuation of U.S. Capitol building.

No damage was reported in Maine, although Scarborough police dispatchers reported receiving “a couple of calls.”

For the most part, the temblor played out locally as a did-you-feel-that meme on Twitter, with people reporting ground movement as far north as Andover. Locally, reports were posted on Twitter at both Pine Point, in Scarborough and Willard Beach, in South Portland.

“[It was] a very mild shaking,” reported Kelsey O’Connell. “I was laying out on Willard Beach and felt the ground trembling. Most people didn’t, but my friend and I noticed.”

Rich Obrey, of Gorham, a freelance photographer who often shoots for Current Publishing, provided a typical report.

“I was sitting in my studio, which is a fairly standard structure with a cement floor, and my chair started to wobble,” he said. “I live near the Shaw Brothers gravel pit and thought at first that they might be blasting. I listened for a book, but there was no sound.”

Obrey said it took only a moment to realize what had actually happened when his mother emerged from her 40-foot camper to find out why it was shaking, while his son reported the flat-screen TV “nearly tipped over.”

Maine State Geologist Robert Marvinney said Maine gets “a handful of very small” earthquakes each year, measuring 1 to 2 on the Richter scale. Generally, the scale needs to tip 2.5 to be felt by humans, while it takes a magnitude 4 to create moderate damage.

“On average, we have one magnitude 3 quake every year that can be felt across a fairly wide area in Maine,” said Marvinney. “It’s very hard to understand exactly what cause one of these in a particular place. We have never been able to relate them to an active fault.”

Maine is part of the North American tectonic plate, which extends from the West Coast to the mid-Atlantic. Earthquakes can happen as plates move and snap against one another, with wave motion causing earth movement far from the edges. That, said Marvinney, could be what caused today’s quake.

“Although most activity, and certainly the largest, happens at the ends of plates, the motion waves gel across the entire plate,” he explained.

In Maine and other northern latitude states, quakes sometimes happen as a result of the earth continuing to rebound from the weight of ice-age glaciers.

“Four thousand feet of ice is pretty heavy, so, yes, that is something that is definitely still occurring,” said Marvinney.