Last night at 10:34 pm, our 101-year-old house, built of brick, lathe, and plaster, suddenly groaned, popped, and shook a little. That was followed by a few loud thuds up and down the street, as other buildings in the Morristown Historical District shifted on their foundations, and a couple of nearby building alarms beginning to sound.
I went outside with a tac light to check the exterior of the house, saw a police cruiser passing slowly by on the street, and asked the officer if he had felt the tremor.
"Yes," he responded. "We're checking for damage."
A few minutes later there were two smaller aftershocks of about 1 second each.
Today, fortunately, there appear to have been no injuries or significant damage from the event, but the USGS confirms that we had a minor 1.7 quake the epicenter of which was directly beneath our city.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsus/Quakes/se102611a.htmlI've been around a number of earthquakes in my life, but this is the first one I've experienced directly above the epicenter. It was an interesting occurrence.
