The pros may call it a minor earthquake, but it rattled a lot of folks Wednesday night.
The Fort Worth Police Department's communications center was "deluged with calls from southwest Fort Worth," said Capt. Kevin Rodricks, a police spokesman."It was described as a loud bang, followed by tremors."The quake, reported shortly after 8 p.m., was centered two miles east of Burleson and had a magnitude of 2.6, said Rafael Abreu, a geophysicist at the National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo."It was at a depth of 13 kilometers, which pretty much is a microquake," Abreu said. "If you go 13 kilometers down below the surface, that's where this happened. So it's very much a shallow quake -- really close to the surface in geological terms."At 8:45 p.m., Abreu said the center had received no reports of damage."Given the size of the quake, we don't expect to see much damage," he said. "The most would be things shaking off shelves close to the epicenter."He agreed that the quake was widely noticed."We have reports from seven different ZIP codes in Fort Worth of this earthquake," Abreu said. "It definitely had some perceptible ground shaking."The first call to the Star-Telegram came from a neighborhood near McCart Avenue and Altamesa Boulevard, followed by another from Edgecliff Village. Social media sites, including Twitter, were abuzz with similar reports.However, Sally Ellertson, a Burleson spokeswoman, said she did not detect the quake at her home."We haven't heard anything," she said. "And there have been no fire calls. I checked out my usual people and nobody is saying anything."It was a different story in Edgecliff Village. Larry Matl was watching the Mavericks game until the quake gave his home a big shake."It only lasted for a second or two, but it was a pretty good jolt," he said. "I called 911 and they didn't know what I was talking about, but while I was on the phone, they said, 'We're getting more calls.' At first people thought it was an explosion."Numerous quakes have been recorded this year in Tarrant County, Abreu said. The most recent was Nov. 19 in southwest Arlington.Bill Miller, 817-390-7684Have more to add? News tip? Tell us
