Robert Kreider, of Ridge Road, Mount Joy Township, was in the bathtub when, he said, "I felt it in my butt. It vibrated."

He said his wife Barbara called out to him, "What was that?!"

At the same time, their dog Maggie rushed into the bathroom and cowered behind the toilet. "That's her favorite hiding place when she's scared," Kreider said.

"We pretty much knew what it was," though, he noted Saturday morning. "Now I'm wondering if I should check into earthquake insurance."

According to the U.S. Geological Survey of the Department of the Interior, Lancaster County was rattled by an earthquake at 12:04 a.m. Saturday; it measured 3.4 on the Richter scale. The quake's epicenter was charted at 40.114 degrees north and 76.403 degrees west, which, according to MapQuest, puts it within a mile or so of Landisville and Colebrook roads on the outskirts of Manheim. It reportedly lasted for about 20 seconds, with a brief aftershock.

The quake was noted in the nearby counties of York, Chester, Berks, Lebanon and Dauphin, and as far away as Erie County, and even into Maryland.

There was no recorded damage to property, nor were there related injuries as a result of the quake.

Thousands were startled by the quake's tremors and grabbed their telephones to share their experiences.

Lancaster Newspapers Inc. receptionist Diane Lefever, who was on duty at the time, said the newspapers' phone lines "were so tied up, I couldn't get to them all. ... I received calls from Holtwood, Manheim, Columbia and Lititz. ...

"One man who called," Lefever related, "told me [the quake] knocked his toupee off."

At LNP's West King Street offices, Lefever added, she did not notice a shake, but she did hear a boom. "It sounded like a bowling ball fell and then rolled along the floor above [me]."

According to Rick Harrison, operations manager for the Lancaster County Emergency Management 911 Center, 919 calls were made to 911 between midnight and 12:30 a.m.

Nine-eleven operators were able to confirm, within 10 to 15 minutes, it was an earthquake, through contacts at Millersville University's Earth Sciences department.

The calls total, however, didn't include those placed to seven-digit lines such as local police departments. Lancaster County Emergency Management coordinator Randy Gockley said, "Hundreds, if not thousands, used nonemergency lines."

In perspective
"We have to go back 11 years, to 1997, to get an earthquake that is comparable" to the one on Saturday, said Dr. Charles Scharnberger, professor emeritus of earth sciences and a seismic station volunteer at MU. That one was recorded at 3.0 in a similar vicinity of the county. And, "since that time, there have been a couple of little ones."

In the 1980s and early '90s, there were several recorded earthquakes [see accompanying chart], the most notable being the Marticville-area quake that measured 4.1 on Easter Sunday, April 22, 1984.

"Here's what gets me," said Drema Brubaker, of Mount Nebo, in southern Lancaster county. "We lived in Marticville in the 1980s." And, she said, she remembers that one well. When she experienced Saturday's tremors in her Mount Nebo residence, she first thought it was a truck, then "some kind of winter storm."

She admitted it scared her. "The whole house shook."

"This is a seismetically active area," Scharnberger said. "Lancaster and Berks, and, to a lesser extent, York."

Dillsburg, York County, had some minor trembling as recently as October.

The connection between the York County quakes and others in recent years in Lancaster and surrounding counties is uncertain, Scharnberger said.

"That's an area of active research among seismologists." Earthquakes do tend to run in clusters, he said, both in duration and in location. "Maybe we are going back to a more active period."

In a rift zone
Saturday's quake happened 2½ miles below the earth's surface. "That's pretty shallow," Scharnberger noted. "They're usually deeper."

According to the scientist, Lancaster County sits "right along a rift zone.

"When the Atlantic Ocean began to open about 200 million years ago ... when Africa split away from eastern North America ... there was also some rifting off to the side." One of those zones, he said, goes right through Pennsylvania, parts of New Jersey and into New England. "Rifting involves a lot of faulting," or cracks and fissures. "Those faults are still around. It's possible," Scharnberger said, "they are being reactivated today.

"The other thing is, at the time of this rifting, there was a lot of volcanic actitivity." Thus, we have an abundance of igneous rock in this area. "Earthquakes seem to be associated with these bodies of igneous rock."

To identify a specific fault, such as the San Andreas fault of California, he said, "we really can't do that here. We don't see that any specific ones are active, except that we have the earthquakes happening."

The probability of a large, damage-producing earthquake to occur in Lancaster County any time soon, he said is "very small."

Report what you know
So, what should people do if they experience the effects of an earthquake? Scharnberger suggests they get online and report it through the U.S. Geological Survey (http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/dyfi/) or Millersville University's Earth Sciences' home page (http://www.millersville.edu/esci/index.php). "There's a form you can fill out," he said. "The more information we get ... that helps us to evaluate the earthquake hazard."

Although it can be frightening to feel an earthquake's tremors, emergency personnel encourage the public to consider very carefully whether a 911 call is warranted.

"I'm absolutely concerned about an overflow of callers" such as those received in the wee hours of Saturday morning, said Harrison, of the 911 center. When so many calls pour in, they go into a queue, he explained, in a "calls-in-waiting-type of situation." That means medical or law-enforcement emergency calls also go into the queue.

"Don't call 911 just to find out information," Harrison advised. "We cannot tie up the 911 trunk lines on calls for information. If you are just looking for information, search the Internet."

Retired Lancaster Newspapers employee Kathy Cassidy, of Saddleback Drive, near Rohrerstown, said she and her family experienced the effects of Saturday's quakes. "It was incredible. We thought the gutters fell off the house. It brought us all up out of bed."

Kathy and her husband, Dave Cassidy, had their adult children visiting for the holidays: Colleen and her husband Marbury Councell, of Baltimore; Matthew, of Philadelphia; and Alana, of Washington, D.C. "Honest to goodness, it was really something that jolted you up. My son-in-law thought someone had dropped something in the garage.

"And I just said to Dave, 'Gee, this is sorta scary.' "

Florence Hoch, who lives on Landisville Road, Manheim, which is believed to be on or near the epicenter of the quake, said she and her husband Merl did feel the effects; she didn't know, for sure, however, that it was an earthquake, she said in a telephone interview Saturday.

The Hochs and a friend, Thomas Freeman, had gone out to look at holiday lights, Florence Hoch related, and had returned home at around 11:30 p.m. Friday night. "We were standing in the kitchen," when, shortly after midnight, "we felt, like, a rolling and the floor shook. And it sounded like something was falling upstairs. The Hochs ran up the steps, then down to check the furnace. "Then we went outside. It was raining. We went to see if something fell off the roof."

The Hochs have lived in their farmhouse for a little more than four years. "Where we live, there's a lot of accidents. We have a retaining wall out there," she said, and they did check that, too, to see if anyone had hit it.

There was a minor aftershock and, at that point, they believed it was an earthquake. Mrs. Hoch said they decided, "We'll get a newspaper tomorrow to see if it was one.

"It was kinda scary," she admitted.

When the Hochs' neighbors, Jay and Ruth Todd, were contacted by the Sunday News and learned their property was at or near the quake's epicenter, Ruth Todd exclaimed: "Are you serious?!!

"It was major for us," she acknowledged. "I happened to be awake. My husband was snoring and he sat straight up and said, 'What was that?!' I said, 'That was an earthquake. I think it was a 3.2.' "

Mrs. Todd said she has no idea how she decided it was 3.2, but she was very close. "I must have listened to somebody talk about earthquakes," she said.

The quake, she added, felt like a truck had hit the house — from underneath — "and the house was moving ... the house was shaking. We both ran out to the other rooms to see if anything had hit the house."

Nothing had, nor had they experienced any damage to the home as a result of the shaking.

A little rumbling isn't an uncommon experience for the Todds. "My husband and I raised our family on a farm across from the Binkley & Ober stone quarry. I was used to the effects of a blast that usually came at 11 or 12 o'clock noon. This [earthquake] was like three times that!"

Ruth Todd said that when she and Jay built a sunroom on their house in 2005, they realized they were "sitting on a rock."

In light of Saturday's quake, she said, she has put that in perspective. "We felt led by the Lord to come to this place," she reflected. "In 2004, we bought it. We don't live here in fear, but in faith.

"We will stand in faith on this rock."

"From a philosophical perspective," said Scharnberger, the seismology expert, " we live on a planet that's very active. We wouldn't have life on a dead planet ...

"So, yes, things like this are scary and sometimes destructive, but they are necessary."

E-mail: akoenig@lnpnews.com; mjulius@lnpnews.com