Modest earthquake rattles area

SUMMERVILLE — Walls quivered like cars hitting potholes. Cats jumped straight up in the air. Christmas trees toppled as their owners heard a boom, then a crack.

A 3.6 magnitude earthquake rattled through the Lowcountry just before 8 a.m. Tuesday. It was a strong shot of coffee to jump-start a work day, but no, it wasn't the "Big One." Not even close.

And so far, no other activity has been reported where two notorious seismic fault lines open on each other near Summerville.

If there were a sequence of quakes, it might indicate that a major earthquake is coming, said Norm Levine, College of Charleston associate geology professor who works with the college's S.C. Earthquake Education and Preparedness Program.

"This isn't anything to worry about. It's not at all the precursor to the 'Big One,' " Levine said. The most significant thing about the temblor is that it was big enough to notice — someand Preparedness Program.

"This isn't anything to worry about. It's not at all the precursor to the 'Big One,' " Levine said. The most significant thing about the temblor is that it was big enough to notice — something that happens every few years in the Lowcountry.

Few injuries and no real damage were reported, which is not so surprising for the relatively modest quake. Dorchester County Emergency Medical workers took a 1-year-old with a cut on the head to the hospital after the child fell from a stool during the quake.

Also in the Summerville area, a 32-year-old woman called for emergency help and reported falling but did not go to the hospital, said Doug Warren, EMS director.

The quake rattled a lot of people. Neighbors in the Scott's Mill community in Summerville gathered in the street to see what happened. People reported the noise as sounding and feeling like a tree falling on the house or a car striking it.

The plates in Heather Byrd's collection in her bedroom began shaking. She thought a big truck was rumbling down the street in Indigo Fields in North Charleston.

Michelle Kaneff had been helping her 12-year-old son get ready for school in their home in Goose Creek's Devon Forest subdivision when she heard a loud rumbling.

"He pointed to the wall and you could see the whole house shifting to the left-hand side and it came right back," she said.

Julie Gwyn, who lives near Charleston International Airport, thought a plane in trouble made the boom.

"Then a ripple was felt from the top of our bed and traveled a straight line right through the house. We could see the movement. It was like someone had shook a carpet from right underneath us," she said by e-mail.

Cee Cee Bowzard in the Lebanon community near Ridgeville felt his couch tremble. As far off as St. George, Donna Walters heard the boom and said it sounded like a bomb going off.

The quake was the first sizable temblor since a 4.1 quake in 1995 shook houses and cracked driveways in Summerville. A dozen or more quakes too small to notice happen most years in the Lowcountry.

The "Big One" refers to a quake the size of the storied 1886 earthquake that killed more than 100 people and injured some 500. The 7.3 magnitude temblor struck just before 10 p.m. on an August night.

Two-thirds of the brick buildings in Charleston were destroyed or nearly destroyed; all the buildings in Summerville, within a few miles of the epicenter, were at least damaged.

Geologic research indicates that massive quakes such as that one have occurred every 500 years or so in the Lowcountry, and the farther removed from the last quake, the more likely it is to happen.

Research indicates a 40 percent to 60 percent chance of a catastrophic quake somewhere in the eastern United States in the next 20 years.

Levine pointed out that in 1886 only about 1,500 people lived in Summerville. Today, some 150,000 live in the immediate area of the quake zone. There's the potential for death, injury and damage worse than the worst hurricane would be expected to inflict, he said.

The quake source is the Woodstock fault — two rifts in the rock deep underground, one traveling roughly from the ACE Basin almost to Lake Moultrie, the other traveling roughly along the Ashley River.

They open on each other underneath the river somewhere around Middleton Place. Lowcountry temblors tend to occur in a zone around that opening.

The U.S. Geological Survey's National Earthquake Center reported the epicenter of Tuesday's quake at 32.950 degrees North and 80.197 degrees West, or just east of the intersection of Ashley River and Bacons Bridge roads south of Summerville.

Reach Bo Petersen at 745-5852 or bpetersen@postandcourier.com. Reach Noah Haglund at 937-5550 or nhaglund@postandcourier.com.

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