Midday quake shakes metro Atlantans

4.3-magnitude quake’s epicenter was in Kentucky.

A 4.3-magnitude earthquake struck eastern Kentucky on Saturday, and the U.S. Geological Survey said it was felt as far south as Atlanta.

The quake struck at 12:08 p.m. There was no immediate report of damage. Twitter was immediately flooded with messages from metro Atlantans and North Georgians who felt the quake.

“I know an earthquake,” Los Angeles native Jennipher Williams told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “It was a good, kind of a rolling quake, as opposed to a jerking, rocking type of earthquake.”

Williams said she felt the quake at her home in northwest Atlanta in the Bolton Road area. The shaking lasted from five to 7 seconds. “It wasn’t strong enough to shake or break anything, or move anything, but it was definitely an earthquake.”

Krista Stewart of Dahlonega in far North Georgia said she and her husband thought the kids were playing at first. “Then I realized that, no, the house was actually shaking,” Stewart said. She described it as “a low rumble, but it was definitely a quake.”

The USGS website placed the epicenter about 10 miles west of Whitesburg, Ky. Residents in eastern Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia and Tennessee also reported feeling the quake.

National Weather Service spokesman Jeff Carico told The Associated Press that employees at the office in Jackson, Ky., which is about 60 miles northwest of Whitesburg, felt the ground shake for about 15 seconds.

The shaking, however, wasn’t as intense 247 miles away from the epicenter in metro Atlanta, but it was noticeable.

Fred Richards, who lives in the Crooked Creek area of Alpharetta, said he and his wife were at opposite desks in their home when the shaking began.

“Each one of us thought it was the other one tapping a foot or something like that,” Richards said. “I got up and looked out the window. She’s like, ‘Is that you?’ and I said, ‘No, is that you?’ And she goes, ‘No, I think that was an earthquake.’”

Los Angeles native Sandra Nunez said she “hadn’t felt an earthquake in years” before Saturday’s experience in Johns Creek. Nunez recalled living through the “very, very scary” 6.7magnitude Northridge quake of 1994 that caused an estimated $20 billion in damage.

Nunez said she’d just finished cleaning and was sitting on her bed when she felt it “moving left to right. This was very light,” she said in comparing the shaking to 1994.