The Post and Courier
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Shaking walls, rattling shelves and a boom sound startled many residents of Goose Creek, Summerville and Ladson as they began their day.
The U.S. Geological Survey's National Earthquake Center recorded a quake with preliminary magnitude of 3.6 at 7:42 a.m. Soon, more than 200 reports about the quake began flowing into the Survey's National Earthquake Center.
"It has been felt in the general area," geophysicist Jessica Sigala said. "We probably won't see damage with this."
Carrie Ann Bedwell, another geophysicist at the Earthquake Center, said the quake was located about 10 miles east southeast of Summerville.
Michelle Kaneff has 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. "Within a couple seconds it had stopped."
Parts of Berkeley and Dorchester counties periodically experience minor seismic activity.
The most devastating earthquake in Charleston struck in 1886, killing more than 100 people and injuring some 500.
The 7.3 magnitude temblor came from the Woodstock fault 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.
The fault is actually 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.
