Kitsap quake shakes region without damage

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A deep earthquake centered beneath Sinclair Inlet jolted a wide area of Western Washington early Friday morning but caused no reported damage.

The 3.6-magnitude quake, which occurred at 12:18 a.m., was centered 31 miles down from a point along the shoreline west of Annapolis, according to a computer analysis by the University of Washington's Seismology Lab.

More than 700 people, from as far away as Arlington in Snohomish County, Gold Bar in the Cascade Mountains and Elbe near Mount Rainier, used the UW lab's Web site to report that they had felt the quake. Many of the reports came from Kitsap County.

"That's a significant earthquake," said Bill Steele, spokesman for the Seismology Lab. "It was felt by a lot of people, but it didn't produce intense shaking anywhere."

The quake occurred within the Juan de Fuca plate, a slab of the Earth's crust that is being pressed eastward and under the North America plate on which we live.

Because the quake was felt so widely, it was picked up on hundreds of seismographs that can be analyzed to further earthquake research in Washington state.

In regard to its depth, Friday's quake was more like the massive Nisqually quake of Feb. 28, 2001, a 6.8-magnitude shaker that caused extensive damage throughout the region.

"Earthquakes above magnitude 3 have enough energy to reach hundreds of stations," Steele said.

Steele said it has been a busy week for seismologists, with a 3.3 magnitude quake near Wenatchee on Wednesday and scattered earthquakes adding up over the past few weeks.

The recent cluster of earthquakes don't seem to be related to each other, Steele said.

"I don't think any seismologist would rule out (a possible connection), for that would imply that we understand everything about earthquakes," he said, "but there is no evidence that we can think of that would connect these events."

Reach Christopher Dunagan at (360) 792-9207 or at