Magnitude-4.4 earthquake strikes Delaware

 

A magnitude-4.4 earthquake has struck in Delaware about seven miles northeast of Dover Air Force Base, the U.S. Geological Survey is reporting.

The quake hit just before 5 p.m. The Delaware Emergency Management Agency said there are no reports of damage or serious injuries.

The USGS says it has more than 2,000 responses from people who felt the temblor throughout the mid-Atlantic — as far south as suburban Washington, D.C., and as far north as the Poughkeepsie, N.Y., area.

An earthquake of that strength is considered to be moderate and generally results in little damage, the federal agency reports.

“We wouldn’t expect to have damage from an earthquake of this size,” said Paul Caruso, a USGS geophysicist based in Golden, Colorado. “We know from the past even when we have quakes above magnitude 3 on the East Coast, they’re felt pretty far away.”

People streamed out of buildings in downtown Dover minutes after the quake, most looking for the source of the disturbance.

Kay Sass, public affairs and emergency management coordinator for Dover, said the earthquake shook the building and “we felt it pretty well at City Hall.” She said there were no reports of damage at this time and no interruption of services in the city. “We first had to figure out what it was and then we checked to make sure the building was OK.”

Dover Mayor Robin Christiansen said the Capitol Holiday Celebration and tree lighting “started with a bang.”

A member of Dover Air Force Base Public Affairs said there were no interruptions to anything out there and no damages reported. “No change in operations.”

In Ocean View along Delaware’s coast, the sensation was more intense. Carole Verona was startled from reading Facebook and a book in her living room on the top floor of her stilt house.

“It felt like someone was downstairs shaking the pilings for 20 seconds,” she said. “The ornaments on our (Christmas) tree rattled a little bit. (We thought), ‘Oh no, our pilings are going to slide into the lagoon.’ “

The last notable earthquake event in Delaware was a ripple effect that the state felt from the magnitude-5.8 temblor that struck central Virginia and parts of Washington, D.C. on Aug. 23, 2011. The damage in Delaware was very minimal, with mild shaking of buildings, the Delaware Geological Survey reports.

“The majority of respondents (in the 2011 quake) noted movement or shaking of furniture such as, bookcases, chairs, and computer equipment, some window shaking, and a few overturned items such as picture frames, bottles, and sculptures,” the Delaware survey recalled on its web site.