Anchorage, Alaska was shaken up by a 5.8 magnitude earthquake on Monday.
A strong earthquake was felt at 4:45 p.m. on Monday. The tembling was felt for over 175 miles of the state and was centered roughly 30 miles northwest of the state's largest city, Anchorage.
The eartquake did not cause major destruction, but it did knock a few items off of shelves. There were no reports of major structural damage and no tsunami warning was issued.
"No reports of damage thus far," Anchorage police spokesman Lt. Dave Parker told the Associated Press. "Just a little shaker-upper,"
Some said that they felt the trembling for up to a minute.
"It hit like a bam, really hard," East Anchorage resident John Owens told AP. He then felt a low level of shaking for about 30 seconds. "And then it ended with a second bam," he said.
The Alaska Earthquake Information Center says this earthquake isn't finished yet. They estimate that there will be about 10 aftershocks with a magnitude of 4.7, 3.7, 2.7 and so on.
Earthquakes are not rare for Alaska. It is a seismically active area but usually the earthquakes are not strong or large enough to be felt. In October a large 7.7 magnitude earthquake off of Canada set off a tsunami warning but Alaska only received waves of about four feet.
The biggest earthquake ever recorded in North America took place close to Anchorage. on Good Friday in 1964, a 9.2 magnitude earthquake which was centered 75 miles east of Anchorage on Prince William Sound caused a tsunami which killed 115 people in Alaska and 16 people in California.
There is even a park decidated to this disaster. Earthquake Park in Anchorage was once a residential area where homes where shaken into 30-foot crevasses and the entire area was destroyed by the 1964 earthquake. It was developed into a park years later and contains monuments and information about the earthquake.
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