Ruralite Cafe: Published 05/01/03

By Lisa Majors-Duff - News Editor

Earthquake rattles our part of the world

"Did you feel it?" was the first question posed at the office water cooler Tuesday. Employee responses were divided; mine fell into the "Yes. You didn't?" category.

Like most everyone here at the Ruralite Cafe, I thought the wind was responsible for what I felt during the night. The window clatter at the head of my bed, I thought, was the result of a combination of things.

First, a stiff breeze must have been blowing enough to jiggle the storm window panes back and forth against each other. And they were moving, I dreamily believed, because I'd taken out the screen Saturday afternoon in a desperate attempt to break into my own house. (That's another story for another day. Let's just say I had a lot on my mind festival day, and my house keys somehow didn't make the cut.)

As most of us learned when we tuned back into reality Tuesday morning, the shaking we felt was actually caused by a 4.9-magnitude earthquake centered near Fort Payne, Ala., which is right up next to the Georgia-Alabama state line. Residents in at least seven southeastern states - including those of us here in Western North Carolian - reported feeling the quake.

"Something fell off the wall," county Commission Chairman and Webster resident Stacy Buchanan told me when I called to chat Tuesday. He went on to say he knew it wasn't the wind "because the wind doesn't shake the bed."

While Chairman Buchanan may need to replace a picture frame, no other significant damage was reported as a result of the Alabama earthquake, which tied the state's largest ever phenomenon of this sort in 1997.

Another Webster resident (who asked not to be identified) said what he felt Tuesday morning has caused him to rethink the idea of ever going to California. "Oh, my gosh," he said. "I don't ever want to go to San Francisco if that's what it feels like."

The quake arrived in Webster at exactly 5:01 a.m., he said, and lasted about 8 seconds.

"I have some Coke bottles in my living room that started clattering," he said. "It woke me up and I got nauseous. It didn't feel like a wave because it hit all at once. I thought I dreamed it."

"I didn't feel a thing," said a Whittier resident who wandered into the Cafe after the lunch crowd had left. "But my dog got scared during the night for some reason."

"They said it could happen around here," Sylva Herald employee and Cafe regular Jeff Rhyne said about earthquake predictions in our part of the world. "I guess they were finally right."

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