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Earthquakes Canada is reporting a 3.9-magnitude quake north of Shawville, Que., early Tuesday afternoon.
People concentrated around Ottawa, Maniwaki and Pembroke have reported feeling the earthquake around 12:36 p.m. Most of the initial reports were about weak shaking.
Earthquakes Canada said quakes that size are often felt in the region but rarely cause damage.
No local earthquake in 127 years of government records has surpassed a magnitude 5.6 quake in September 1944. Quakes in 2010 and 2013 were around a magnitude of 5.
Major earthquakes are magnitude 7 and above.
‘I freaked out’
Briony Baxter was eating lunch at her home in Pembroke, Ont., when she says she felt her house shake. Her dog leapt off the couch and her cat freaked out.
“I freaked out [too] because … I could hear the washer and dryer in the basement banging,” she said.
Nothing fell of the walls of her home but there was no question in her mind that it was an earthquake. Baxter lives close to Garrison Petawawa and sometimes helicopters fly over her area.
“It was nothing like that,” she said of Monday’s quake, which happened within a larger western Quebec seismic zone, according to Natural Resources Canada.
The earthquake took place roughly in the same location where a magnitude 5.2 quake was recorded in 2013, said seismologist Michal Koraj.
“Normally … damage starts around a magnitude 5,” he said.
