The earth literally shook for as long as several minutes across Lancaster County Tuesday afternoon.

Tremors could be felt here beginning around 1:50 p.m. and lasted anywhere from about 10 seconds to as long as several minutes, according to reports.

A professor at Millersville University said the quake was the strongest to hit the region since 1884.

Several businesses in Lancaster evacuated employees, but no injuries or structural damage were reported in the city or county, according to officials.

"We're just fielding a lot of calls from people telling us they felt it," said Eric Bachman, the duty officer with Lancaster County Emergency Management Agency.

Rick Harrison, operations manager at the county's 911 center, said about 200 calls came in during the 25 minutes after the earthquake.

"Unfortunately, all the calls were coming at one time, and from all over the county," he said.

The center received 140 911 calls and another 60 calls on its non-emergency lines, all related to the tremor.

By 3 p.m., the call volume had subsided.

Andi McCue, the county's chief clerk, said all county buildings are being inspected for damage.

No service interruptions or other problems were reported at the county prison or the Youth Intervention Center, she said. The most pressing effect appeared to be the county's 911 center being inundated with phone calls, McCue said.

Cellphone users also reported problems making calls or sending text messages shortly after the quake hit.

Emergency personnel elsewhere in the county said they were not aware of any damages.

Charles Scharnberger, professor emeritus of earth sciences at Millersville University, said Tuesday's earthquake was the biggest here since 1884, when a quake with an epicenter off New York City rattled the area.

"This is a pretty big deal for the mid-Atlantic region," he said. "It's a 100-year event."

Scharnberger, who operates the university's seismograph station as a volunteer, added, "It will probably be a long time before we have another like it in the mid-Atlantic region — 'probably' being the key word.

"You can never be absolutely sure. Earthquakes are notoriously unpredictable."

Rare and impressive as it was, the quake still fell well short of the power necessary to cause property damage, he said.

On the 12-point earthquake intensity scale, the Mercalli scale, Tuesday's event here was a 3 or 4, Scharnberger estimated. A 6 is needed to start causing structural damage to well-built buildings.

"People felt it pretty distinctly here. Windows rattled. It sounded like a heavy truck going by," but it was "not at all (dangerous) around here."

Ironically, Scharnberger was not among those who felt the quake because he was driving home from the grocery store at the time.

Rob Sternberg, professor of earth and environment at Franklin & Marshall College, was at home in bed "under the weather" when he felt his bed rattle, he said.

"It was a very rhythmic shaking," Sternberg said.

The quake began at 1:52 p.m., when the "first waves began coming in," he said. The temblor was centered between Richmond and Charlottesville, Va., making it a "fairly big quake for that region," he said.

Earthquakes in the East tend to be felt over a fairly wide area as compared to quakes in the West, Sternberg said, because the rock crust is older and colder here, and thus it transmits energy more efficiently.

"So if you had the same kind of quake out West, you probably wouldn't feel it as far away."

Ken Work, Quarryville police chief, said he felt "rocking and rolling" at his office from the earthquake.

"I was at my computer and looking out the window, and it started out mild. Then it started shaking worse," he said.

"I went outside, and the maintenance guys were out in the parking lot with one of our big front-end loaders. … That thing was rocking."

Work also reported seeing telephone poles and flagpoles shaking outside his office.

"I don't ever remember having (an earthquake) that strong in this area," he said.

Wayne Lucas was sitting behind the counter of his shop, Strawberry and Co., at 11 E. King St., when he felt a strong vibration in the floor.

"Our Christmas ornaments began to take off, then the gourd penguin was swaying, and then I saw the solar system moving," he said, pointing to a model that hangs from the ceiling of his small shop. "It was weird."

"Fortunately, nothing broke," he said. "We were lucky."

Lucas said it makes you wonder what's next.

"Are we going to have locusts coming down King Street?"

Pearl Rutherford, of Fox Road, Brickerville, was sitting in her living room recliner talking on the phone to a friend when the quake hit.

Rutherford exclaimed, "Oh my gosh, my chair is shaking."

Her friend on the line, Charlotte Bauman of Dead End Road in Brickerville, replied, "My sofa is shaking."

"We were both just flabbergasted," said Rutherford, a retired Brethren Village caregiver. "When I realized what it was, it was a little scary."

Ronald Bowers, a retired city worker who was in his North Mulberry Street apartment when the quake struck, said the jolt had the 6-foot corn plant in his apartment shimmying.

"I thought my TV was going to fall off its stand," Bowers said. "It was enough to rock it."

At first, he didn't realize the cause of the vibrations.

"I heard rumbling. I thought maybe someone was doing construction and blasting dynamite. I didn't know what it was or whether the building was going to fall down," Bowers said.

Two neighbors in the 600 block of State Street in Lancaster city had previous experience with earthquakes.

Jerry Brown lived through one in Fairbanks, Alaska, and Michael Joyce was living in San Francisco when a quake "knocked me out of bed."

Both said Tuesday's quake paled in comparison. But, as Brown said, "It's still scary because everything's moving."

"I was roasting red peppers, and the dog started going crazy and our overhead lamp started swaying back and forth," Brown said.

Joyce was paying bills "when my daughter said, 'Did you feel that?' and I realized the house was shaking."

Even though Tuesday's quake was small, Joyce said, it was unsettling.

"Something like this, you just don't know what's going to happen," he said. "You don't know if it's suddenly going to stop, or if it's going to keep getting worse until the earth opens up."

When Christina Stoltzfus, owner of Riverbound: A Heritage Deli at Lancaster Central Market, first felt the earthquake, she wondered if she was experiencing low blood sugar.

"I was tired, and when I felt the shake I thought, 'oh no, what's going on with me,'" she said. "Then Lane (her co-worker) asked me if I felt it, and I thought, 'Oh good, it's not me.' And then we saw the stand signs swaying."

Stoltzfus thought it was a big truck rumbling by outside.

Shannon Knauss, who works at Pineapple House Creations at Central Market, felt the floor starting to rock.

"My baskets were swinging," she recalled. "I asked Faith if she felt anything, and she said I was crazy."

"I didn't feel a thing," said Faith Zimmerman, who was working across the aisle at Barr's Farm Produce.

"But then about two minutes later my mom called and asked me if I felt it," Knauss said with a laugh. "So I did my 'hooray dance.' I wasn't crazy after all."

Lancaster city fire Chief Tim Gregg said there were only a few calls from concerned residents in the city immediately after the quake.

City firefighters checked a few homes for damage but found none. A day-care center and the Verizon telephone building on North Duke Street also were evacuated and checked, Gregg said.

No damage was discovered.

A UGI spokesman said the company was not aware of any quake-related leaks, but still would spend the next 24 hours or more inspecting its system.

City public works director Charlotte Katzenmoyer also said no damage had been reported in the city.

If the quake damaged any city water mains, it would not immediately be obvious, Katzenmoyer said, because it can take a while before water makes its way to the surface.

"If any mains did separate, unless the ground opened up, we wouldn't notice it that soon," she said.

According to newspaper records, the most recent report of substantial earthquake-related activity here came just after midnight on Dec. 27, 2008.

That quake, centered about a mile north of Salunga in East Hempfield Township, measured 3.4 on the Richter scale, it was reported.

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

Staffers Jane Holahan, Larry Alexander, Bernard Harris, P.J. Reilly, Brett Hambright, Tim Mekeel and Chip Smedley contributed to this report.

bwallace@lnpnews.com

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