Some residents are anxious after a pair of earthquakes in Peabody, but this expert says not to fear

The ground underneath Peabody may have shook a couple of times over the last few weeks due to minor earthquakes, but residents shouldn’t worry, according to one earthquake expert.

The city logged two earthquakes within the last month, according to the U.S. Geological Survey National Earthquake Information Center. There was one on July 25 with a magnitude of 1.4. The other was last Wednesday, with a magnitude of 1.2.

While Massachusetts isn’t known for major earthquakes, like the ones that shake California, there still can be “interplate quakes,” according to Don Blakeman, a seismologist with the NEIC.

He said the two earthquakes fall under the idea of a main earthquake and aftershocks, though he noted that the latter is simply another earthquake in the same spot.

The size of the earthquake determines how long it lasts, Blakeman said. The ones in Peabody would last about a second; ones of a larger magnitude can last minutes.

“A quake like this would be a very quick jolt,” he said.

Minor earthquakes like this also aren’t strong enough to cause any damage. In fact, he said they typically wouldn’t knock something off a shelf. However, people in the Northeast aren’t used to experiencing earthquakes like they do in other places where they’re more common.

The last earthquake left some Peabody residents on edge.

“Do I think the end of the world’s coming? No, I don’t,” resident Barry Silverman told NBC10 Boston. “It’s just a weird feeling.”

The Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency said it’s also looking into the incidents by “coordinating with officials from the City of Peabody, the USGS and the Weston Observatory to discuss recent earthquakes and other reports of sounds in the Peabody area,” in a statement to the news station.

The reference to sounds has to do with incidents earlier this year, when the city was contending with loud blasts that were investigated with dogs and drones.

There isn’t a way to predict earthquakes, Blakeman noted. On a grander scale, he said seismologists anticipate there could be an earthquake in California within the next 30 years, but that’s all they know.

“The uncertainty bothers some people,” he said.

But damaging earthquakes can happen even where they’re not common. He gave the magnitude 5.8 earthquake near Mineral, Virginia on Aug. 23, 2011 as an example. 

“It’s extremely unlikely,” Blakeman said. “I would tell people not to worry about it.”

For those who remain wary, he suggested checking some of the earthquake preparedness resources on the USGS website. But odds of Peabody seeing a reboot of 1974’s Charlton Heston disaster classic “Earthquake” seem pretty slim.

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