Minor earthquake shakes Maine

From Great Pond to Lamoine to Bradley, people felt the earth move Wednesday night, and for good reason. An earthquake registering 3.3 on the Richter scale hit parts of Maine.

Considered minor, the earthquake at 8:24 p.m. was centered about 25 miles east of Dover-Foxcroft, according to John Bellini, geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Earthquake Information Center in Colorado. That data is considered preliminary, however.

It was felt in parts of Hancock, Penobscot and Piscataquis counties.

Mary Henry felt it from her home in Lamoine, although her 21/2-year-old daughter, Robyn, slept through it. Henry, who survived the devastating earthquake in California in 1989, felt the familiar roll and thunder as she sat on her bed watching television.

Nothing on the walls moved, but the ground shook and moved, she said. It had the sound and feel of a snowplow rumbling down the street, but Henry knew it couldn’t be that.

Many thoughts passed through her mind in the span of seconds until it finally hit home, until it finally registered: earthquake. Years earlier, she had been in a warehouse converted to offices when the San Francisco earthquake hit, causing huge wooden beams above her to split from the walls and killing people just a few blocks away.

There was no such havoc Wednesday, just a reminder.

“Once you feel it, hear it, you never forget it,” Henry said.

Patrick Glover, in Great Pond – a small community near Route 9 in Hancock County – was standing in his kitchen when something unexpected happened.

“The whole foundation shook, you could feel it rumbling through the foundation,” he said.

The deep rumbling was followed by the clinking of glasses that were standing by the front window.

Living on a dead end street in Howland, Darren Whitney sometimes has tractor-trailers backing up in his driveway after they’ve realized they are not on the road to Interstate 95. Wednesday wasn’t one of those times.

It felt like a washing machine out of balance had been placed in the room next to his bedroom where he had been lying down, Whitney said. It only lasted 15 to 20 seconds, he thought, and just to make sure he wasn’t alone in feeling it he called up friends and family, both near and far. Friend Charles Mushroe, who was close by, had been on his front concrete steps – about 3 feet thick and 6 feet wide – when they began vibrating. Another neighbor reported a pot moving on the stove.

Whitney called his parents in Winter Harbor and his brother in Gouldsboro, but they hadn’t felt it, he said.

It was felt in Bradley – 11 miles northeast of Bangor – where Dan Delaware was just entering his home.

“It shook the house pretty good,” said the Bradley firefighter, whose first thought was that his furnace might have exploded. He looked around and found nothing amiss in his home. He checked with others in the area and found they, too, had experienced something. Dishes in neighboring homes had rattled.

Bellini said the investigation into Wednesday’s earthquake was still preliminary and that more information could come Thursday.