Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - Many people around Western New York heard a loud boom and were shook awake early this morning due to an earthquake measuring 3.8 in magnitude, making it one of the strongest earthquakes to hit Buffalo in the last 40 years.
"The fact that the earthquake was just about three or four jolts and lasted two or three seconds was a good indicator that it was to be a small earthquake," said Dr. Michel Bruneau, an Earthquake Engineer from the University at Buffalo. "There's a direct correlation between the length of strong shaking and the magnitude of an earthquake. By the time you have just a few jolts this morning, you could tell he was about to be a four, maybe a five at worst (magnitude-wise)."
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Luckily, earthquakes of this caliber don't result in significant damage. "A small earthquake like this is not likely to produce damage, unless you find some very distressed structures who are already from the beginning at risk," said Dr. Bruneau.
These types of earthquakes are called intraplate earthquakes, meaning they happen within the interior of a tectonic place and not at a fault, where earthquakes are more commonly occurring. They're much less understood and less easier to predict, according to Dr. Bruneau.
Thankfully, these kinds of earthquakes do not compare to the ones in Turkey. "It's two different things altogether," said the doctor. "The earthquake in Turkey is on the South Anatolian Fault, which is quite remote from everything we're talking about here today. Magnitude 3.8 [earthquakes] are in the 1000s of earthquakes every year. Magnitude 8 earthquakes, there's at least one every year."
Typically after a earthquakes, aftershocks ensue. However, the professor says not to worry. "If you have a magnitude 7 earthquake, there'll be followed by sixes and fives, and it will eventually attenuate over time. For 3.8 earthquakes, we'll probably get a bunch of threes and twos and ones, which nobody will feel actually because they're too small," said Dr. Bruneau. "Keep in mind that the difference between three and four is a logarithmic scale. So a four earthquake is 10 times more powerful than a three."