Earthquake Hits Buffalo, NY, Area in Early Hours, With No Damage Reported

An early morning earthquake rattled Buffalo, New York and nearby Niagara Falls in one of the largest temblors to hit the region in a century. No damages have been reported.

(Bloomberg) — An early morning earthquake rattled Buffalo, New York and nearby Niagara Falls in one of the largest temblors to hit the region in a century. No damages have been reported.

A quake with a magnitude of 3.8 occurred about 8 miles (13 kilometers) southeast of downtown Buffalo at 6:15 a.m. local time, according to the US Geological Survey’s website.

“It is a little unusual at this size,” Jessica Turner, a USGS geophysicist said Monday in an interview. “It probably gave a wakeup call if they weren’t already woken up.”

Other notable seismic events in the area included a 4.7 magnitude earthquake in 1928 that was about 20 miles east and a 3.8 magnitude shaker around nearby Canadian city Toronto in 1999, Turner said. More recently, tremors of 1.4 magnitude happened just south of Monday’s incident back in September, she said.

In comparison, the deadly earthquakes that struck southern Turkey on Monday and killed almost 2,000 people in the region had magnitudes of 7.7 and 7.6 and are deemed some of the strongest to strike the Middle East.

Erie County engineers have been inspecting roads and bridges, but so far haven’t found any damage, according to a tweet from Mark Poloncarz, an Erie County executive.  At least 4,000 people contacted the USGS through its website to say they felt the quake. 

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