Minor quakes rattle Lyon County

The Silver Springs area was shaken Wednesday and early Thursday by a series of small earthquakes, seismologists at the University of Nevada, Reno, said.

"The largest was 3.5 (on the Richter scale) at 11:51 p.m. Wednesday about five miles south of Silver Springs, but we have no reports of damage or injury," said Diane Depolo, a UNR seismologist.

More than a dozen other quakes were reported, ranging from 1.1 to 3.4, but most of those were too small to be felt, seismologists said.

A 2.1 quake was reported just after 5 p.m. Wednesday.

UNR has several monitoring stations in Lyon County.

"Nevada has between 20 and 30 quakes every day," Depolo said. "They are so small that most people ignore them.

"People in Nevada think quakes are California's problem and that they stop at the state line."

Depolo said it is not clear if the Lyon County quakes might signal more or larger temblors are on their way soon.

She said seismologists also can't say if the shakers are related somehow to other quakes around the world, such as the 7.5 quake Sunday in the Kuril Islands in eastern Russia near Japan.

"We do know that there seemed to be a pulse from the 1992 Landers earthquake in California that led to aftershocks in Nevada and Utah," Depolo said.

Silver Springs resident Donna Piccolino said she felt only two of the rumblings that shook the tiny enclave in the desert -- the most notable in the middle of the night as she slept.

"My boyfriend said we just had an earthquake, and my daughter and I started laughing because we thought that probably wasn't true, but within seconds another one came and we felt that," she said. "There was nothing else for the rest of the night then at 11:48 p.m. or so I was sleeping, and all of a sudden the house was rumbling.

"I could hear the things on my dresser shaking. A picture on a shelf in the music room fell on the floor and broke, and all the picture frames on my entertainment center had fallen over and a speaker had fallen over. That was a pretty strong one to be knocking stuff over and waking everyone up."