5.2 earthquake shakes Midwest

CHICAGO – Having grown up amid the rolling farmland of the Midwest, Traci Hart and her family are used to weathering arctic-cold blizzards, filling sandbags to barricade against floodwaters and hearing the sound of tornado sirens each spring.

But the shaking that began in the predawn hours Friday was so unnerving, she fell out of bed and stumbled around inside her darkened Olney, Ill., home blindly in search of safety.

Her 13-year-old son was so bewildered that he told her, “I thought it was another meth lab blowing up.”

Here in the heartland, they’re already calling this the big one. The 5.2 earthquake – which the U.S. Geological Survey said was centered in a field about 20 miles south of this downstate farm town near the Illinois-Indiana border – slammed windows shut and rattled high-rises from Kansas to Tennessee.

The shaking may not have been strong enough to quicken the pulse of quake-blasé Californians, but in the Midwest, Friday’s 4:37 a.m. wake-up call – and the dozens of smaller quakes that followed – is being spoken of with the same awe and reverence of the last big tremor to rock southern Illinois. That was back in 1968. It was a 5.3, and was felt by nearly half the country.

Back then, like now, there was little damage and few injuries.

Bricks were knocked from chimneys. Television antennas fell off roofs. Church bells rang.

“My daughters never believed that the cracks in the plaster in their grandmother’s house came from an earthquake,” said Sheila Trout, 33, who works at Hart’s downtown Olney cafe. “When everything was shaking, they came screaming into my room. This morning, they finally believe me when I say that we live near a fault line.”