Quake rattles Mat-Su

SKWENTNA — A 6.2 magnitude earthquake that struck about 10 a.m. Thursday on the western edge of this unincorporated area caused little damage in the borough.

Valley residents reported shaking lasting about a minute. Officials at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Alaska Earthquake Center reported feeling the quake’s effects for about 15 seconds. The US Geological Survey website put the epicenter near the confluence of the Hayes and Skwentna Rivers due west of Shell Lake, about 120 kilometers underground.

Where in some cases people might have been compelled to run outside, the earthquake sent workers at the Alaska Earthquake Center running indoors, according to Sara Meyer, a research technician there.

“We ran out to our screens and looked at the wave forms coming in,” she said.

Officials were still in the process of reviewing the data on the earthquake late Thursday morning, Meyer said, and seismologists were expected to issue a statement with specific details once an examination was completed, though the most likely suspect — geologically speaking — would be the Pacific plate subduction, or sliding under, the Alaska plate, Meyer said.

Damage projections, based primarily on population densities, showed the likelihood of severe damage was low.

“We’re estimating a 65-percent chance that this quake will cause less than a million dollars in damage,” she said.

The nearest densely populated area would be Willow, where Lisa Ybarra, a bartender at the Willow Trading Post, said people evacuated buildings, though the ultimate result may have been merely some dislodged glasses.

A woman who answered the phone at the Swkentna Roadhouse said no damage had been seen in the area moments before the connection to the hotel and restaurant was severed. Phone service to the extremely rural roadhouse is routinely sporadic.

Barbara Broadwater, who works at the Talkeetna Roadhouse, said the earthquake was felt throughout town there.

“Everybody felt the shaker,” she said. “It’s one of the nicer ones we’ve had.”

By ‘nicer,’ she meant that the build up to the hardest shaking was more gradual than in past earthquakes.

“This was just a long rolling quake,” she said. “We didn’t hear anything, because there wasn’t that sharp punch. It kept rolling and rolling.”

Broadwater has lived in Alaska since 1987, and before that lived in California, and considers herself something of an earthquake connoisseur.

Pedestrians in town didn’t notice the earthquake, while others sitting still in cars did notice, Broadwater said.

Pictures and other wall fixtures were shaken around the Valley, according to emergency manager Casey Cook.

“There are no new lakes, no new crevasses,” he said.

Contact Brian O’Connor at 352-2269 or brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com.