It was an ordinary day. Talking with my wife about the earthquake that allegedly struck our home town of Lancaster. We were both sitting in our living room when we saw a notice on the TV screen about the earthquake that was being felt in parts of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania at present. The headline on the front page of our newspaper later read...."Natural Phenomena - 'This is just not normal for where we live.'" Sub-head also read, "Locals react to effects of rare earthquake felt in Lancaster County on Friday." Seems that a woman, Emilie Ash, in the nearby town of Terre Hill, was working in her home when her house been to shake. Now, that would scare me, too! But, it's not uncommon for tractor-trailers to blow through the eastern Lancaster County borough of Terre Hill and rattle the buildings from time to time. But, she said that she had never experienced anything like that before and it just wasn't normal for where she lives. She, and thousands of Lancaster County residents felt the effects this past Friday morning of what the U.S. Geological Survey said was a 4.8-magnitude earthquake centered in Lebanon, New Jersey, about 50 miles west of New York City and about 100 miles northeast of Lancaster County. I live on the West side of the city of Lancaster and no one in our neighborhood of Woodcrest Villa felt any shake, but residents across the county, from nearby Columbia Borough to Gap and everywhere in between, were calling police, neighbors and the self-report system on the USGS website. A woman living in Conestoga, Deanne Moore said she was sitting at her kitchen table, on hold with her doctor, when she noticed vibrations in her hand which was resting on her kitchen table. Can't imagine what her doctor must have thought when the nurse on the phone with her told the doctor that her house was shaking. People in New York City, Baltimore, Philadelphia, the Massachusetts-New Hampshire border and other parts of the mid-Atlantic regions were calling in seismic activity as well. The USGS estimated the earthquake was felt by more than 42 million people. I guess everyone but those living at Woodcrest Villa felt the earth shake!! The seismometer at nearby Franklin & Marshall College' seismometer, housed at the Millport Conservancy in Warwick Township, registered the quake around 10:24 a.m. F&M Geosciences professor Zeshan Ismat said it is no surprise county residents felt the vibrations 100miles from the epicenter. Depending on the type of earthquake, seismic activity can be felt over very long distances. Prof. Ismat said if a fault in New Jersey moves, the consequences of that shift will ripple out to any subsequent faults across the area, a sort of domino effect. Luckily, Lancaster doesn''t sit on any fault lines and is not a place where earthquakes are common, but it is the most active seismic region in the state. Ismat said significant earthquakes are uncommon for Lancaster County, pointing to studies showing that since the mid-1700s, the county has had about two dozen earthquakes with a magnitude of 4.5 or higher. The county last experienced a significant earthquake are in 1984, when a 4.1 magnitude quake hit Marticville in Martic Township. According to the USGS, there have been 400 earthquakes of magnitude 3.5 or greater in eastern North America in the last 50 years. A 5.8 magnitude quake centered about 40 miles northwest of Richmond, Virginia, in 2011 is among the most powerful in recent years. No damage was reported to USGS from Lancaster County residents using the agency's self-reporting system this past Friday. One local woman said she thought the rumblings created by the earthquake were the rumblings of her neighbor rolling their trash cans home. The tremors were minor, and her cat didn't even wake up. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.
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