There were no reports of damage, though both ODNR and the Athens County Emergency Management Agency received dozens of calls about the quake. "(Southeast Ohio) is not really a seismically active area," said Tim Leftwich, a seismologist at ODNR. "It's not noted to be an earthquake prone area of the state."
Calls from as far as Charleston, W.Va. were reporting shaking, Leftwich said. Though the county is hundreds of miles from the nearest tectonic plate boundary - in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean - a small fault line runs through the northern part of Athens County, said Doug Green, a geophysicist at Ohio University who studies earthquakes.
"It's consistent, the location of the earthquake (and) the approximate depth are consistent with a structural weak point in the Earth's crust," Green said. The U.S. Geological Survey placed the quake's depth at 7.9 km - too deep to be triggered by a fracking injection well, said Green, who is currently studying drilling's effects on seismic activity.
