Earthquakes in South Carolina (Charleston, York: earthquake, live, dangerous)

[KMT]

Can any SC residents (or anyone who has researched the topic) comment on earthquakes in SC? You don't hear much about them so they can't be too bad.

KMT

[Liz in North Augusta]

Look up USGS and see the latest earthquakes in the United States. South Carolina has had two minor quakes in the past month. There was a big one in the late 1800's. I quess it could happen again but I don't lose sleep over it. It's amazing how many small earquakes there are each day in the world.
The earthquake site is on my list of favorites to check daily. It's interesting.

[KMT]

Thanks for responding...I'll ceck it out.

Keith

[MoMark]

That earthquake happened in 1886 and destroyed large sections of Charleston. It killed quite a few people in collapsing buildings too. There hadn't been a known history of earthquake activity in the area and the size of the quake was similar to the Loma Prieta Earthquake that struck the San Francisco Bay Area on Oct. 17th, 1989 at 5:04pm (I was there and remember thinking my a$$ was gra$$). There are occasional quakes in the Carolinas, and up and down the East Coast. There was just a minor quake in Maine on Monday that caused water tables to fall over a wide area causing fears that wells might run dry. Boston sits in a quake-prone area, and earthquake faults actually traverse downtown New York through Manhattan. St. Louis and Memphis could be destroyed any time by the New Madrid fault, Salt Lake City lies on the Wasatch Fault which is thought to be capable of delivering up to a 7.5, Seattle sits in a subduction zone called the Juan de Fuca that is so dangerous that it is thought that historical earthquakes in that area equaled the Great Indonesian Quake of Dec. 26th, 2004. Everyone knows about California of course, but Las Vegas sits in a major earthquake fault zone as well, and then there's Alaska. It's everywhere almost.