Earthquake Was Nothing to Worry About

Scientists at the U.S. Geographical Survey told the Philadelphia Daily News that the 1.7-magnitude quake that shook the far Northeast near Bensalem was no big deal.

Philadelphia and Bensalem police received numerous calls reporting a big boom Friday night. On Saturday, the USGS said it was a small earthquake.

"These little earthquakes happen all the time on really small faults that are everywhere," USGS geophysicist John Bellini told the newspaper. "This one is not an active fault. It never will be studied. It never will be named. We're never going to know exactly where this fault is. It's so small, we're never going to find it."

He said the earthquake was caused by a 100-foot-long fault compared to the San Andreas Fault's 800 miles. According to the USGS, the quake occurred on Chalfont Drive near Academy Road at 9:33 p.m at a depth of 2.6 miles.

The USGS website said the urban corridor (New York-Philadelphia-Wilmington) is laced with known faults but numerous smaller or deeply buried faults remain undetected. Moderately damaging earthquakes strike somewhere in the urban corridor roughly twice a century, and smaller earthquakes are felt roughly every 2-3 years.

Click here for the full story courtesy of the Daily News.