South Carolina has now had 10 earthquakes, as of noon Wednesday, near the Columbia area in just as many days. According to WYFF, Steven Jaume, an Associate Professor of Geology at the College of Charleston, said, “we are looking into this, it is a bit unusual.”
However, the professor, who specializes in earthquakes, said, “One thing to keep in mind is South Carolina is earthquake country.” The quakes have occurred near the Lugoff and Elgin areas since Dec. 27, according to South Carolina Emergency Management Division.
This is an area near a regional fault system. “It’s actually called the Eastern Piedmont Fault system; it actually goes through Alabama up into Virginia,” Jaume said, “There are faults, and these are usually very old faults and they formed when the Appalachians were being formed,
so the question is are they being reactivated are they kind of starting back up again in that particular area and that’s what we are investigating.” Although this series of tremors have been coming in swift succession, clusters often happen. According to the South Carolina Emergency Management Division, the state typically averages up to 20 quakes each year. At this point, there have been half the amount in only 10 days.
“When we have a sequence of earthquakes that kind of keeps going we call it a swarm but usually a swarm doesn’t have one earthquake bigger than the others. So we have the 3.3 which was clearly the start, so these are more of long-lived aftershocks right now,” said Jaume.
