MORRIS HIT BY MAGNITUDE 3.0 EARTHQUAKE
Staff and Wire reports - February 3, 2009

Morris County residents are reporting being shaken by an apparent earthquake late Monday evening.

Won-Young Kim, a seismologist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Obervatory in Palisades, N.Y. said an earthquake of magnitude 3.0 was recorded at 10:34 p.m. Monday, centered in the Morris County communities of Rockaway, Dover and Morris Plains.

There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries, and Kim said it was unlikely that a quake of that magnitude would be a damaging event. Quakes of magnitude 2.5 to 3 are the smallest that can generally be felt by people.

Police say the quake triggered a flood of 911 calls, with residents reporting a sound like an explosion and houses shaking.

Kim said small earthquakes are not unusual in this area of New Jersey.

Several people reached by the Daily Record Monday night said they felt their homes shake for three to four seconds.

“I looked outside to make sure — I thought maybe a plow fell,â€

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"If you thought old, abandoned mines were only in the west, then you haven't been to IronMiners.com!"

After work yesterday I took a drive down to visit a friend in Denville, NJ yesterday. While sitting at the ground level of my friends house while working on my laptop, I suddenly heard a deep earthy sounding rumble vibrating the floor beneath me for about 10 seconds. At first I thought, "explosion at the Tilcon Quarry?" but then I'm like, "I think we just had an earthquake!" While the earth didn't shake enough to cause any sort of damage or set off any alarms, it sure lends an appreciation to what lies below you. When you hear and feel such a deep roaring shift of earth beneath your feet, it really makes you mind wonder how much force of earth actually shook. Interesting.

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"If you thought old, abandoned mines were only in the west, then you haven't been to IronMiners.com!"

We had two of them near here in the last month.
Wonder what's shakin' up the ground in the Northeast...

~S

Yeah, that is pretty funny.. Read about it and heard about it in the news. I was up this time watching my PVR recorded 24 in Hopatcong, i didn't hear or notice anything. Although I sometimes play 24 a bit loud..

Miner Greg

it sounds more like some kind of explosion everybody is saying big bangs and stuff,,,would an earth quake sound like rumble rumble?

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Dunder Mifflin, the people persons paper people.

Growing up in Rockaway I was used to hearing actual explosions around noon from the Mt Hope Rock Quarry. But after I heard this, it sounded and felt like the ground beneath me was doing the work, not the quarry. While a 3.0 earthquake is no cause for concern, it definitely is a mind bending experience. To think that an unimaginable sized block of earth has shifted in this way reminds me that there is much more going on than what is on the surface of the planet.

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"If you thought old, abandoned mines were only in the west, then you haven't been to IronMiners.com!"

I hope NE pa doesnt get any decent sized earth quakes

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Dunder Mifflin, the people persons paper people.

A few years ago, my wife and I sort of had an interesting afternoon when one
centered near Cleveland OH(?) occured. Our shelves rocked back and forth and I was watching our hall, leading to the bedrooms , just tilt from side to side.
Mind, we were on the eighth floor. Our cat 'Spring' hid in a closet and wouldn't come out for hours!

An area near Woodstock ON sometimes would get microtremors that were set off either from quarry operations--dynamite blasts, or, from an oil field near a place called Gobles ON more vigorous forms of tremors from the oil company injecting sludge slurry into the wells to pump what they could out of them. So
much fun---

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Neeb?

Rockaway seems to get a good quake every few years, but for whatever reason I still have never heard any of them. I guess I was either sleeping or too far away to notice..

When I was young, we'd always hear the explosions from Mt Hope Rock Quarry, so that was just normal. Nothing strange at all hearing that multiple times a day. Some of those were pretty loud too.. We were not near the Quarry, but they still sorta shook the house.

Miner Greg

I seem to recall seeing a map of that area around Rockaway--seems there
may be some active faulting in the area---with the Gobles oilfield there is a number of small faults scattered around.

The Beachville Quarries would do the rock n roll whenever they'd pop one off
I remember sitting in class in school and hear a WHoOFF!!--and the pencils
jump.

I went there a couple of years ago after we had a 3.6 tremor--turned out they
had a 'pop-up' occur. Stripped some overburden up and I guess the horizontal
compressive strain in that layer just released when they finished stripping it off.
Left a 400+ ft split diagonally across the floor---quite the sight---

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Neeb?