SHAWNEE TOWNSHIP – Dozens of Shawnee Township residents who reported feeling tremors shortly after
midnight Friday were not imagining things.
The United States Geological Survey agency reported a 2.4 magnitude earthquake took place at
approximately 12:22 a.m., with its epicenter somewhere near the intersection of Ohio 117 and Seriff
Road, northwest of Fort Shawnee.
“I live two blocks away from what they’re calling the epicenter, and it never even woke me up,” Shawnee
Township Police Chief Mike Keith said Friday morning. “I didn’t know anything about it until I came into
work today.”
Keith said there have been no reports of damage as a result of the quake.
“I guess our office did receive several phone calls asking if something had happened at the (Husky)
refinery,” he said.
Robert Sanders, a spokesman at the National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colorado, said 2.4
magnitude earthquakes are “relatively small and usually not large enough to cause any damage.”
He said more than 70 area residents had reported feeling some type of tremor on the USGS website by early
morning Friday.
“Typically people report some light shaking associated with these types of earthquakes, but usually not
in too wide of a range,” Sanders said.
While rare, earthquakes do happen in northwest Ohio. There’s a mapped fault line in Allen County.
Dozens of area residents responded to requests made on the Allen County Emergency Management Agency’s
Facebook site to report what they heard or felt.
“We felt it and heard a loud booming sound” on Mills Road, Andrea Voglesang wrote on the page.
Kayla Miller added on the page, “We live in Lima by St. Rita’s, and my husband felt it.”
Gina Robinson added, “I live by Schoonover Park. It sounded like someone hit my house.”
The boom shifted furniture on Lima’s Lakewood Avenue.
“We live on Lakewood. Heard a boom and significant shaking. Moved our heavy king-sized bed,” Marilyn
LaRoche Dawson wrote on the EMA’s page.
The whole house shook for Sara Siebeneck.
“My husband and I felt it. We live over by LCC. It lasted about three seconds. Our entire house shook,”
she wrote on the Facebook page.