Around New England

Third Earthquake in 38 Days Hits Central Massachusetts

January 29, 2019

A minor earthquake hit the area of Templeton in central Massachusetts on Monday night, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The 1.6 Richter scale magnitude earthquake hit a little after 6 p.m. Monday, January 28, according to MassLive.com.

An earthquake of 2.2 magnitude hit the same area on December 21, followed by 2.0 magnitude earthquake on December 22, according to WCVB Channel 5 in Boston.

Earthquakes less than 2.5 magnitude usually aren’t felt by people living nearby, and it typically takes a 5.5 magnitude or greater earthquake to damage buildings, according to UPSeis, a web site dedicated to seismology, which is the study of earthquakes.

Templeton is a town of about 8,000 people on Route 2 in Worcester County, just west of Gardner and about 24 miles northwest of the city of Worcester.

Massachusetts had 408 felt earthquakes between 1668 and 2016, according to the web site of The Northeast States Emergency Consortium.

The last major earthquake in Massachusetts took place in 1755, centered in the Atlantic Ocean about 30 miles east of Cape Ann. The modern estimate of the magnitude of that one is 6.2. It damaged more than 1,000 buildings in Boston and elsewhere, but did not result in reported injuries or deaths.

A report in 1990 by the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency estimated that a similar earthquake nowadays would cause hundreds of deaths, thousands of injuries, and more than $4 billion of damage.