An earthquake was felt throughout the Chattanooga area and far beyond about 5 a.m. Tuesday.
A number of people were awakened by a shaking that lasted about 15 seconds.
There were no reports of injuries, but there was some property damages and cracked foundations. Some power was reportedly knocked out around Fort Payne, Ala. The water system at Ider, Ala., on Sand Mountain was shut down when the water became muddy.
The U.S. Geologic Survey said the center of the earthquake was 15 miles east northeast of Fort Payne near the Georgia line.
The earthquake registered 4.5 on the Richter Scale, it was first listed. That was revised later in the morning to a 4.9.
It occurred about 3.1 miles beneath the early, experts said.
The tremor did not set off earthquake sensors at Sequoyah Nuclear Plant at Soddy-Daisy.
Earl Freudenburg, of WDOD Radio, said a number of listeners called to report feeling the same intense jarring.
They described items shaking in their homes as the apparent tremor occurred.
An official at the National Weather Service in Morristown said that at about 5 a.m., he felt a "shimmering" in the room and then "waves" of the boom. "You could feel a side by side motion of the table."
He said the shake was felt in a wide area from Kentucky to Georgia and South Carolina.
A Chattanooga woman who experienced many earthquakes while living in California said she headed for the basement of her house after the earthquake started.
A Rossville woman said she "felt the house shaking. I thought the floor was falling in. I was scared."
A woman in LaFayette, Ga., living on the ground floor of a 3-story apartment said, "I heard a boom and everything in my apartment was shaking."
The tremor caused some dogs to howl, residents said.
A Bakewell man said the water was splashing out of his fish tank.
Crystal from Chattanooga said, "When the earthquake came I was asleep. Then I woke up at 5:00 thinking it was time to get up so I laid back down and felt my bed shake. I thought I was dreaming until I went to school."
Charles Farmer of Opelika, Ala., said, "I live in East Central Alabama and was awakened at approximately 4 a.m. CT to my dogs howling and house shaking. The trembling lasted about 15-20 seconds. My wife and I didn't want to believe that it was a temor. However, after 20 minutes of deliberation we called our Police Department and they confirmed the unthinkable."
Margie Gardner in Chattanooga Valley said, "David and I were up early and felt the tremor. It shook the house, though I don't think anything was damaged. My first thought was that our daughter, Heather, who heads out early for rowing, had backed her VW wrong out of the garage and hit the house. Several items fell off of shelves in Mama's closet at her house next door. In fact, her pipes in the yard going from her well to the barn broke, so she had a swamp hole in her yard this morning when I headed up to check on her. I was able to turn off the power and, of course, then all of her water. But the swamp has stopped filling up. She called Dick Mason who works with the Widows Ministry and helps the widows with house problems, and hoped he could come help us. His wife said that she wasn't the only widow who had called about breaking pipes this morning, so there must be more damage about than initially reported."
Tralece Sullivan of St. Elmo said, "I too was awakened by the earthquake this morning. My dog was barking and she sleeps with me so I woke up and heard a noise like a stiff breeze blowing for a few seconds. Then the house bumped twice. I used to live in Loma Linda, Cal., and I have been in a minor earthquake there. It has been years since I lived in California, but it's amazing how you immediately recall some things. I knew instantly that it was an earthquake because it was exactly like the one I was in many years ago in California."
Officials said the largest earthquake known to have occurred in East Tennessee was the 1973 Maryville earthquake, which had a magnitude of 4.6.
Earthquakes are a shaking of the Earth’s surface caused by rapid movement of the Earth’s rocky outer layer. Earthquakes occur when energy stored within the Earth, usually in the form of strain in rocks, suddenly releases. This energy is transmitted to the surface of the Earth by earthquake waves.
Email your earthquake experience to news@chattanoogan.com