Small Earthquake Strikes West Tennessee Along New Madrid Fault

Luke 21:11 There will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places, and fearful events and great signs from heaven.

Residents of western Tennessee were given a jolt to their Wednesday morning commutes when a small earthquake struck around 8:26 a.m.

The magnitude 3.5 quake was centered about 16 miles northwest of Covington, TN or about 50 miles north of Memphis.

“I was just sitting down and I was inside of a building and it was just shaking, so I thought it was construction or something,” Covington resident Kiana Burnett told WMC-TV.

Local officials say there were no reports of damage and that inspections of bridges are taking place for safety reasons, not because they actually believe any bridge was damaged by the quake.

“What it means for the local person is if you were in Covington and weren’t in a car or something, or was just sitting somewhere, you probably felt an earthquake this morning, and that’s about all it means,” Dr. Mitch Withers of the University of Memphis Center for Earthquake Research and Information told WMC.

The quake struck along the New Madrid Fault, a massive fault line that is 20 times larger than the famed San Andreas fault in California.   Withers did remind reporters that just because this quake did not cause large damage, the fault line can cause massive damage from significant earthquakes.

One thought on “Small Earthquake Strikes West Tennessee Along New Madrid Fault

  1. David Wilkerson wrote that he saw an earthquake not the California area, but a place no one was watching for, and a smaller one was followed by a monster one that took over the news casts for a long period.

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