A Earthquake occurred in New England

Earthquake

Earthquake in southern Maine rattles

A earthquake occurred at 7:12 p.m., in New England on Tuesday evening. No damage or injuries were immediately reported. The epicenter wasw four miles from Hollis center, which about 20 miles west of the state’s largest city, Portland. Initially, the USGS put the magnitude at 4.6 but later downgraded it to 4.0.

The earthquake that hit southern Maine Tuesaday night and was felt in New England states as far away as Connecticut caused no apartment damage or injuries, but it rattled residents throughout the region.

Earthquakes are rare in New England but they’re not unheard of. In 2006 there was a series of earthquakes around Maine’s Acadia Park. The strongest earthquake recorded in Maine occurred in 1904 in the Eastport area, near the states’s eastern boreder with Canada according the Weston Obeservatory at Boston College. It had an estimated magnitude of 5.7 to 5.9.

New England and Long Island are far from the nearest tectonic plate boundaries, which are far out in the Atlantic ocean and the Caribbean Sea, the USGS reports. Historically, there have been studies of small or deeply buried faults in the region, often leaving the source of the quakes unidentifiable.