Pair of earthquakes strike Puget Sound region early Friday
Jul 12, 2019, 5:31 AM | Updated: 9:20 am
Many in the Puget Sound region were awakened by two earthquakes out of Snohomish County early Friday morning.
“I was sound asleep and all of a sudden everything started rattling and woke me up,” said Don, a Snohomish-area resident. “I thought it was the air conditioner. I’ve been having problems with an air conditioner, so I thought it was that, and it turned out it was off.”
MyNorthwest Earthquake Tracker
People across the region woke to their homes shaking after a 4.6 magnitude earthquake struck, followed by a 3.5 magnitude shake minutes later. KIRO 7’s Morgan Palmer says that there is a 5 percent chance (1 in 20) that such a quake is a foreshadowing of a larger one.
According to the MyNorthwest Earthquake Tracker, a 4.6 magnitude earthquake struck at 2:51 a.m. It was centered almost 14 miles below Three Lakes — about 40 miles northeast from Seattle and six miles east of the city of Snohomish. According to KIRO Radio Reporter Heather Bosch, the shaking lasted about 10 seconds.
“I just felt the movement of my bed shaking,” said 19-year-old Emma who had to get up early for her job at a coffee shop near the epicenter of the quake. “It woke me up. I was with my boyfriend and he thought someone was breaking in, so he freaked out. Then we realized it was an earthquake.”
“It wasn’t that scary, I knew what it was…” she said. “My heart was just pounding though. It was the first thing I woke up to.”
A second 3.5 magnitude earthquake hit at 2:53 a.m., about 2.5 miles west of Monroe. That quake was nearly 19 miles deep.
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There was a cluster of about eight aftershocks following the two shake ups. There have been no major injuries or damages reported.
Cameras at 36th Street and Smith Avenue in Everett caught the shake up. According to USGS, reports of people feeling the earthquake range all the way to Vancouver BC, Wenatchee and south of Olympia. Most reports state it was weak to moderate.