An earthquake with an epicenter northeast of Augusta shook metro Atlanta homes Friday night.
The quake measured a magnitude of 4.1 and happened at 10:23 p.m., according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The earthquake’s epicenter was Edgefield, S.C., about 25 miles from Augusta. Plant Vogtle, which is on the outskirts of Augusta in Waynesboro, suffered no problems from the quake, a Georgia Power spokesman said Saturday afternoon. Officials did a walk around the nuclear plant, which provides power to about 500,000 homes and is one of the utility’s two nuclear facilities.
“The plant is built in a robust manner to withstand seismic activity and shock absorption,” Georgia Power spokesman Brian Green told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “It didn’t have any issues. The plant is operating at 100 percent.”
However, the quake was strong enough to send tremors into Georgia and Tennessee.
“It was a very shallow earthquake, about 3 miles deep,” according to Chief Meteorologist Glenn Burns with Channel 2 Action News.
Tremors were felt all over metro Atlanta, from Gwinnett to Paulding counties and areas south. Dozens of people used Twitter to ask The Atlanta Journal-Constitution what caused the tremors, which some described as powerful enough to shake walls.
“Was there just an earthquake in Roswell, GA? Or is my house on a sink hole?” one person Tweeted to The AJC.
“I have lived here for 19 years & have never felt my house shake like it just did,” a Walton County resident posted.
If you felt it, let the Geological Survey know online.
Earthquakes are not uncommon in the southeast and are felt once every year or two, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The largest earthquake in the area, a magnitude 5.1, occurred in 1916.
At 3 a.m. Saturday, the Associated Press issued the following report:
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reported two nearby dams on the Savannah River appeared to be undamaged, but planned a thorough inspection Saturday morning, Edgefield County Emergency Preparedness Director Mike Casey said.
Casey said the quake was centered in a sparsely populated part of Edgefield County where there are a lot more rabbits and deer than people. He was driving around and hadn’t found any damage, but he expects some reports of minor damages to come in once the sun rises.
“To get an accurate assessment we’re going to need daylight. I could be looking at damage in the dark and not know it. Tomorrow morning, I go out to get my paper and I see the bricks in my house are cracked,” Casey said.
Authorities across South Carolina said their 911 centers were inundated with calls of people reporting what they thought were explosions or plane crashes as the quake’s low rumble spread across the state.
Reports surfaced on Twitter of a leaking water tower in Augusta, Ga., following the quake, but the tower was damaged by ice from a winter storm earlier this week and not the quake, said Richmond County Sheriff’s Lt. Tangela McCorkle.
No damages or injuries from the quake itself had been reported, said South Carolina Emergency Management Division spokesman Derrec Becker. The ice storm felled a lot of trees in the area, which could make it more difficult to determine what damage was caused by the quake.
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley felt the earthquake at the governor’s mansion in Columbia. She asked the Department of Transportation to inspect bridges in the area Saturday morning as a precaution, said her spokesman Doug Mayer.
Tom Clements, a resident of suburban Columbia about 60 miles east of the quake’s epicenter, said he felt the walls of his brick house shaking “and they were definitely shaking like what I’ve experienced before in Latin America” during an earthquake.
Clements said he immediately went outside to see if anyone else had felt it and he found two neighbors who had.
“One thought a tree had fallen” under the weight of ice dumped by the storm, he said.
— Staff writer Tammy Joyner contributed to this article.
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