ELGIN, S.C. — After a few weeks of silence, the ground underneath the Elgin and Lugoff communities has let loose yet another small earthquake.
The latest earthquake actually happened around 11 a.m. on Friday, however, according to the South Carolina Emergency Management Division, was only confirmed early Saturday morning.
The agency, which has often alerted South Carolina residents to the recent earthquakes, said that it sometimes takes the United States Geological Survey (USGS) more time to verify low magnitude tremors.
This particular earthquake was rated initially at a magnitude of 1.7 but has been revised to a magnitude of 1.8. The USGS has received about 10 reports, so far, from people who felt the earthquake, which appears to have an epicenter in line with those that occurred weeks earlier between Fort Jackson Road and John C. West Freeway.
Earthquakes below a magnitude of 2.5 are generally unnoticed by the public, though people near the epicenter may still feel the effects.
It's been just over a month since the last of 18 earthquakes rattled the same region, 17 of those presumed to be aftershocks of a considerably larger magnitude 3.3 earthquake that preceded them.
While authorities have not said whether Friday's earthquake was also an aftershock, it was in the same location and had roughly the same rating as those that rattled lower Kershaw County from late December into early February.
Experts suggest these earthquakes all happened along a portion of the Eastern Piedmont Fault, which runs from Alabama to Virginia. However, no exact reason for the sudden earthquakes, or their clustering in the Elgin area, has yet been provided.