SC Midlands hit by earthquake for 2nd time in days
The Midlands of South Carolina was shook Monday morning by the latest in a series of earthquakes.
The 1.8-magnitude quake was recorded near Elgin on Monday, according to the S.C. Department of Natural Resources’ Geological Survey.
Rumblings were felt shortly after 10 a.m. and were recorded by the U.S. Geological Survey at a depth of 4.7 kilometers beneath the surface, or just under three miles.
Monday’s earthquake comes only a few days after a slightly larger earthquake was recorded in Kershaw County on Friday, approximately seven miles from the most recent epicenter.
This area of the state has been relatively quiet since its most recent earthquake was registered in June. But Monday’s quake was the 15th registered in South Carolina so far in 2023, exceeding the state average of six to 10 per year.
The area hit Monday is particularly earthquake-prone. Ten quakes have been registered in the area along Interstate 20 in the southwestern corner of Kershaw County in the past year. But residents may not have noticed all of them — the largest was a comparatively small 2.54-magnitude earthquake that hit on Oct. 30, 2022.
In the summer of 2022, state emergency officials held a public meeting in Camden specifically to address concerns about the earthquake outbreak, assuring residents South Carolina has contingency plans for a larger quake, but experts said smaller shakes are not necessarily indicative of a looming larger disaster.
While not as active as western states like California, South Carolina does have several smaller faults running underneath it. The largest in state history was a 7.3-magnitude quake that hit the Charleston area in 1886, killing at least 60 people, leveling buildings in a city still recovering from the Civil War, and causing $158 million in damage in inflation-adjusted figures. Reverberations from that quake were reported as far away as New York City.
A similarly sized earthquake today would do billions of dollars worth of property damage and affect millions of people, state emergency planners have said.
This story was originally published October 9, 2023 at 12:17 PM.
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