Town buzzes over temblor
Toolbox
By Brent Curtis Herald Staff - Published: May 15, 2007
HUBBARDTON — The mild earthquake that shook the town early Monday was too gentle to wake many residents, but was a hot topic all day for those who were awake to feel it.
Recorded as a 2.1 temblor on the Richter scale, the quake hit at 4:10 a.m. along a fault line about four miles under the town, according to the U.S. Geological Survey's Web site.
The motion from an earthquake that registered so low on the scale could be imperceptible to people at the site, USGS geophysicist Jessica Sigala said.
"It's very possible that not everyone would feel it," she said. "It would feel like a calm shaking."
About half of the customers who visited the Lake Hortonia Country Store on Monday were in the "didn't feel a thing" category, according to store owner Jody Gale.
"Everyone has been like 'Did you feel it?' Well, I was awake and I didn't feel it," said one woman who talked with Gale inside the store on Monday afternoon. Gale said he didn't feel the quake either.
But the other half had a lot to say about the quake that lasted only seconds.
"I heard this noise and felt the ground move very slightly," said Genny Everson, who lives in Sudbury. "I can't wait to call my girlfriend in California."
Earthquakes are rare in Vermont and the Northeast in general. But while the quake on Monday was the first in Vermont in 2007, it was the second in the Hubbardton area in less than a year, Sigala said. In October, a 2.9 earthquake hit Vermont about 10 miles north of the one that jostled the town on Monday.
Like her father, Taelor Gale didn't feel the quake. And like her father, Taelor said she spent a good part of her day hearing about it — not at the store, but in class.
Taelor, an eighth-grader at the Castleton Village School said her science teacher used the tiny temblor as a teaching tool. But just as she slept through the actual thing, Gale said she had a hard time concentrating on the lesson.
"I was falling asleep during that part of class," she said.
One Hubbardton resident who said he was wide awake at 4 a.m. said he not only felt the earthquake, he saw what caused it.
Roland Mable, whose home sits next to the Lake Hortonia store, said he saw something in the sky to the northeast of the lake. He believes he saw a meteorite and that's what triggered the earthquake.
"It was like a streak of fire," he said. "I've heard meteorites hit before and that was what it sounded like. It was no earthquake, it was a meteor."
Contact Brent Curtis at brent.curtis@rutlandherald.com.
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