A minor earthquake shook Middle Georgia on Sunday night. The quake was centered in the tiny town of Deepstep in Washington County. The United States Geological Survey says people there reported shaking and a loud noise. The tremor measured 3.2 on the Richter Scale. It was felt up to 15 miles away in Baldwin County.
Andrew Newnan is a geophysicist at Georgia Tech. He says earthquakes like this occur about once a year in Georgia, and it's hard to predict where they will happen.
"We don't have any well-defined faults that earthquakes generally occur on. They seem to occur over several diffuse regions. We do have the potential for very large earthquakes, but I would say at this point there's no increased potential."
Newnan says a quake of this size translates into an approximately one centimeter shift in the Earth's crust. Three even smaller quakes have occurred in Middle Georgia this year. There were no reports of damage or injury from the quake.

Tags: GA., Washington County, Baldwin County, earthquake, Deepstep, United States Geological Survey, USGS