By CHRISTIAN MAITRE
Waltham Times Contributing Writer
The effects of a 3.8 magnitude earthquake that struck the York Harbor area of Maine at 10:22 a.m. on Monday were felt here in Waltham.
In fact, effects from the quake were felt as far as southern Rhode Island, according to a map from the United States Geological Survey, part of the federal Department of the Interior.
According to the Waltham Police Department, one resident called the station’s nonemergency line in confusion before realizing it was a quake.
Police had not received reports of damage to any structures or property in the city as of Monday afternoon.
Waltham is more than 70 miles from York Harbor, but the city should expect to feel an earthquake from that far away, said William Clement, an associate professor in near-surface geophysics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Clement said New England’s rocky composition absorbs less of the earthquake’s energy than softer earth materials, so earthquakes in the region are felt farther than in other areas of the country.
And they are more frequent than some realize. “Earthquakes (in New England) are not particularly uncommon, they’re just very small,” Clement added.
The Weston Observatory, a geophysical research lab at Boston College located in neighboring Weston, records several smaller earthquakes a month in New England, according to John E. Ebel, a Boston College professor and senior research scientist at the observatory.
Ebel explained that earthquakes with similar magnitudes to the one on Monday, Jan. 27, occur around every five years in New England.
He also said that the effects felt depend on how close someone is to its origin, or epicenter.
“By the time you get to Boston, there may not be any noise at all, and people would feel maybe a very slight rocking motion or maybe hear a very low rumble,” he said.
He didn’t doubt that residents in Waltham would have felt the tremor.
He said communities near bodies of water, like the Charles River, could have felt amplified sensations of the ground shaking due to underwater sediments being shifted.