The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
A history of earthquakes in Connecticut.
For many Connecticut residents, Friday’s earthquake was the first — or at least the largest — they’ve experienced.
But while earthquakes certainly aren’t common in Connecticut, they’re not unheard of either. Here is a brief history of quakes in the Constitution State.
Connecticut’s largest quake
The largest earthquake recorded in Connecticut came more than 230 years ago, on May 16, 1791.
The village of Moodus, within the town of East Haddam, is said to have been known by local indigenous tribes as Machimoodus, “meaning the place of noises,” and that day it lived up to its reputation.
According to ConnecticutHistory.org, a project from Connecticut Humanities, the village experienced two shocks in quick succession, followed by dozens of lighter ones.
“The stone walls were thrown down, chimneys were untopped, doors which were latched were thrown open, and a fissure in the ground of several rods in extent was afterwards discovered,” one account of the quake reads.
The quake is estimated to have had a magnitude between 4.4 and 5.0, according to the Northeast States Emergency Consortium. In the many years since, Moodus has experienced other, smaller tremors — but none that approach 1791.
The runners-up
The next largest quake in Connecticut history, per a 2007 report from the Connecticut Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security, came Nov. 14, 1925 near Hartford.
“Plaster was knocked from walls, and many residents were frightened,” the report recounts.
Further notable tremors shook the Hartford area in 1837 and 1840, while the Bridgeport area felt the ground shake in 1845 and again in New Haven in 1858. Nearly a century later, in March 1953, Stamford felt a minor tremor, which shook furniture but caused no significant damage.
Overall, the state experienced 115 recorded earthquakes from 1678 through 2016, according to the NESC.
The most recent
Though it wasn’t technically centered in Connecticut, a 1985 quake with a magnitude of about 4.0 struck in Ardsley, N.Y., only a few miles across the border from Fairfield County.
The quake occurred along the Cameron’s Line fault, which runs through Ridgefield, Danbury and other communities in western Connecticut and has frequently caused minor tremors in the area.
Even more recently, a wave of small earthquakes with magnitudes between 1.5 and 3.3. were felt in the Plainfield area in January and February 2015. And just last week, on March 28, a similarly small quake was recorded in southeastern Connecticut, causing buildings to shake in Ledyard.
Outside of Connecticut
Just as Friday’s earthquake struck outside Connecticut’s borders with an epicenter in Lebanon, N.J., it still reverberated in this state. Others throughout history have done the same.
The NESC lists various examples:
• A magnitude 6.2 earthquake in Cape Ann, Mass., on Nov. 18, 1755 that was felt statewide here in Connecticut.
• A magnitude 5.6 earthquake in Newburyport, Mass. on Oct. 29, 1727, also felt statewide in Connecticut.
• A magnitude 5.0 earthquake centered in New York City Aug. 10, 1884 was felt most strongly in southwestern Connecticut.
• Large quakes as far away as Quebec on March 1, 1925, and Virginia on Aug. 23, 2011, were felt by some in Connecticut.
Where Friday’s quake fits
Though not technically a Connecticut quake, last Friday’s tremor will likely stick in the minds of many who felt it. It’s one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded in the Northeast and was felt not just in one community but across much of the western half of the state.
Few living Connecticut residents can recount Hartford’s 1925 earthquake, and certainly none were alive for the Moodus tremor of 1791. Even the Ardsley quake has likely faded from memory.
But as of Friday, there’s officially another to mark down in state lore.