10-1-03

By TIM YEADON, Staff Writer
News & Record

REIDSVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA.

The rumble and crack that surprised Reidsville three weeks ago could have been mistakened for the sonic boom of a passing jet fighter.

Or to Thurman Hatchett, 61, it was like a bomb exploding on the next city block.

Suddenly, the city of 14,400 began to roil and rumble in a way that some said they had never before felt, but yet instantly recognized.

"It jarred the whole neighborhood," Hatchett said at his Benson Street house. "All my neighbors came outside and just looked at each other."

Reidsville police heard from more than a hundred curious callers - some of them frightened - who phoned in looking for answers. Police had none.

There had been no explosions in town.

It was an earthquake, and likely part of a recent "earthquake swarm" that some experts suggest may linger for a while in the Reidsville area.

The National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo., did not record even the slightest blip on its seismic map. The center compiles data from a web of seismic meters placed across North America.

"We have a station near Asheville," said Waverly Persons, chief of the National Earthquake Information Service. "And anything that people feel, we should be able to see."

Nonetheless, on Sunday, it happened again.

Shortly after 3:30 a.m., the city was awakened by another booming crack and rattle that shook beds and sent neighborhood dogs into a full howl. A small quake, like the first quake on Sept. 12, rumbled and let out a slow moan. But again, no damage was caused, and it failed to register on government seismographs.

"We got about 10 calls this time," said Reidsville police Capt. Dan Huber. "I'm sure it puts people on edge, especially with two earthquakes in recent weeks."

What is happening in Reidsville is not exactly known. Several local experts say they believe the city has been experiencing "swarms" of tiny, shallow earthquakes for at least a year, and possibly 18 months.

No epicenter has been identified, though it appears to be confined within the Reidsville area. Police say most startled residents have called from the western part of the city along Freeway Drive and Vance Street, but others rang in from homes stretching north toward the upper city limits.

"When stress builds up over thousands of years, it will pop loose," Ken Taylor, an earthquake expert and director of the N.C. Department of Emergency Management, said. "We do live in earthquake country. This is a moderate-risk earthquake state."

Also disturbing are the loud individual "bangs" that crack through the quiet early mornings like sonic booms, but without a quake's shake.

"I started hearing them about six months ago. I didn't know what they were," said Keith Brown, 49, a resident of Piedmont Street in central Reidsville. He says he believes the loud noise originates from the west side of town.

He can't be sure.

"It's like an explosion," he said.

Experts say the sonic booms are caused when a shallow quake is acoustically amplified by the giant swaths of rock that band across the county, and in Reidsville tend to jut up close to the surface of the ground.

So far, Reidsville's earthquakes nowhere approach the strongest in modern North Carolina history, the most intense of which, a magnitude 6, occurred near Asheville in 1916. That temblor knocked bricks loose, cracked plaster and loosened chimneys, according to the U.S.G.S.

That may never happen in Reidsville.

"There's really no way of knowing," Chapman said. "They'll probably continue for a couple years, then stop."

Or maybe they won't.

"Every now and then these things develop into a full-fledged earthquake," Chapman said. "You never can know."