[Buffheart]

Kingston

A 4.5-magnitude earthquake that hit the peninsula early Friday left some Kitsap residents feeling uneasy about the rude awakening.

Although the quake was centered between Kingston and Indianola, people as far away as Port Orchard reported feeling at least a little jolt.

There were even reports of tremors in Victoria, British Columbia, 71 miles north.

Lucille McGinnis, who lives on Hillcrest Drive in Port Orchard, said she was woken up by the quake at 5:25 a.m.

"It was a sudden thud, like something had hit the house. The house creaked and almost immediately it felt like something had jumped on the bed," she said in an e-mail. "No swaying or rolling. Just the hard jolt."

It was minor compared to the Feb. 28, 2001, Nisqually earthquake, a 6.8-magnitude temblor that was one of the largest recorded earthquakes in state history.

Friday's earthquake came from the same general source and at a similar depth as the Nisqually quake. Friday's quake was centered at a depth of 36 miles, while the Nisqually quake was at 32 miles.

The Nisqually quake left a bad impression on McGinnis, who said she is now terrified of even mild earthquakes.

"My heart was beating like a drum, and it gave me a headache," she said of Friday's experience.

Others, like Poulsbo-area resident Linda Lee Wirsch, were awake during he quake but barely noticed it. Her husband was in the shower and didn't even know there had been one.

Driftwood Key resident Randy Olson was also in bed when the earthquake hit. While the shaking rattled the headboard of his bed, which woke him up, he reacted differently than McGinnis.

"It only lasted about five seconds," he said. "I wondered if it would keep up and the next thing I knew I was back to sleep."

Olson, the owner of Majestic Mountain Coffee Roasters in Kingston, spent his morning talking to television news reporters who came to town to report about the quake.

Small earthquakes are common in the Pacific Northwest. That's especially true in Kitsap because of its proximity to fault lines that stretch from Tacoma to Seattle and from the Hood Canal to the base of the Cascade Mountains, according to University of Washington seismologist Bill Steele.

And the odds say we'll see more of them.

"There is an 87 percent chance another one of those deep earthquakes will hit in the next 50 years, and it could be right under Kitsap or north of there," he said.

Friday's quake was the largest in Washington since a 4.6-magnitude in October 2006 near Mount Rainier. Other quakes have hit closer to home in Kitsap in the last year, near Lake Symington and Kingston, but those were in the 2.5-magnitude range.

Kitsap is in the Cascadia Subduction Zone, which is where the offshore Juan de Fuca plate is sliding under the North America plate. These plates could eventually produce a "megathrust" quake. That would happen if a tectonic plate broke, and could result in a magnitude 9 earthquake that could last as long as 5 minutes. The last one to happen in the Northwest was in 1700.

"The main message for folks is, you really need to be prepared for a dangerous earthquake," Steele said. "That means being self-sufficient for 72 hours at least and being ready to help your neighbors because services like police and fire departments will likely also be affected."

(http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2009/j...or-earthquake/)

I live in Bremerton (about 30-35 minutes away from Kingston), but never felt it. BTW, Kitsap is a county, not a city