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Magnitude 5.8 Earthquake Rattles Buffalo Area: Residents Report Strong Shaking
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Syracuse, New York — At 6:15 a.m. today, a 3.8-magnitude earthquake hit near Buffalo. It shook houses and woke up people in Western New York.
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Mark Poloncarz, the leader of Erie County, tweeted, "It felt like a car hit my house in Buffalo." "I got out of bed quickly."
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Poloncarz said that nobody had heard of any damage.According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the earthquake was centred about 4 miles east of Buffalo and happened about 2 miles underground.
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More than 2,500 people have told the USGS that they felt the earthquake. These people are from places like Niagara Falls, Rochester, and southern Ontario.
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People in western New York wrote on social media that they first thought the earthquake was a truck hitting their house, a water tank exploding, or a sonic boom.
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"Omg, I'm shaking in Cheektowaga!!!," one woman wrote.And since this was in Buffalo, many people thought right away of snow.
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Someone on Twitter said, "I thought it was snow falling from the roof."Kevin O'Neill tweeted, "You know you're from Buffalo when an earthquake wakes you up and the first thing you think is, 'Was that a snow plough?'"
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The USGS said that there are "moderately frequent" earthquakes in the area, but that most of them are not strong enough to cause damage.
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Earthquakes Canada says that a 3.8-magnitude earthquake is not very strong and is not likely to cause much damage.
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The scale used to rate earthquakes is logarithmic, which means that each number is 10 times worse than the last. A quake with a magnitude of 5 is 10 times stronger than one with a magnitude of 4.