Did You Feel It Or Hear It?
At 4:41 a.m., last Friday, July 1, many folks in the Turtle Cove area were awaken by a loud boom and some even felt their houses shake.
According to the United States Geological Survey, the ultimate source for earthquakes, there were no earthquakes in our area on that date and time. In recent years, this is our fourth experience of the locals with the loud boom and shake.
There was a fire reported at the Jasper County Landfill on that date which has not been associated with the loud boom.
Many earthquakes originate so deep in the Earth that they are never felt or heard, but in the above case, it could be an “earthquake explosion.” The earthquake happens when plates many miles under the earth’s surface are moving cause the noise or the burp to release the great energy.
Millions of years ago, there was only one land mass, Pangea, and then the land masses began to separate. If you look at the shape of the Southeast United States and the way it would almost perfectly fit into the shape of Africa, the land mass slipped under the Atlantic Ocean.
The area that slipped under the Atlantic Ocean is called the lithosphere which is 50-120 miles below the earth surface. Below that is an unstable layer called asthenosphere about 430 miles below the surface.
Scientists describe this layer as being like a road that has become cracked and disjointed. Movement in the earth allows the top layer to move under the unstable asthenosphere layer. When this happens the energy of movement can cause an earthquake explosion and wake up hundreds in doing so. There is constant movement beneath us, but we are only aware very rarely.
Extremely high temperatures, estimated at 2,370 degrees, constantly keep the deep recesses of earth in constant movement.
The state newspaper that covers Columbia, S.C. reported on July 5 they had had 21 earthquakes in the past week. Since December, 2021, that area in particular around Lugoff,and Elgin, S.C. have experienced what is known as a “swarm of earthquakes,” hundreds of small earthquakes. Lugoff and Elgin are east of Columbia. Many of these earthquakes cause loud booms. .
There is a ancient fault line that runs down the East Coast passing through South Carolina and eventually close to Milledgeville, Ga. When Washington, D.C. suffered from a strong earthquake in 2011, WSB-TV reported that people in Covington, Ga. felt it. That earthquake was felt by more people than any other one in the history of earthquake records.
