Did you feel it? 3.9-magnitude earthquake shakes people awake near Fall City

A 3.9-magnitude earthquake awakened people near Fall City Tuesday morning, with several aftershocks afterward.

The initial quake at 3:17 a.m. was felt by people in Fall City, Snoqualmie, Carnation, and North Bend.

Jozie Crisafulli felt the shaking early in the morning. She spoke to KIRO 7 as she went to a coffee shop early this morning near the epicenter of the quake in Fall City.

“Yeah, I was really scared… everything was just shaking and I kind of just woke up and was kind of like whoa!,” Crisafulli said.

Harold Tobin, director of the PNSN, said the shake was definitely one people would feel.

“This was certainly an early AM wakeup call for lots of people in the Cascade foothills,” Tobin said.

Tobin says the quake was minor, but Fall City is relatively close to Monroe, where a 4.5-6 quake hit in summer of 2019.

“The Monroe earthquake and this earthquake were not too different and both were broadly in the area of the Darrington Devils mountain,” Tobin said.

Tobin says the Fall City earthquake was shallow, which is why people really felt it.

There were several aftershocks, including a 2.3-magnitude quake at 3:47 a.m. and a 2.8-magnitude quake at 4:51 a.m.

Crisafulli said she felt one of many aftershocks. “You can kind of feel everything rattling and the bed shaking and the ground… I was kind of like is there going to be more? I laid there for a while after the first one waiting for another one to happen.”

Tobin says the Fall City quake only lasted seconds.

He does not believe it signals a larger quake is coming. “We always have the potential for damaging earthquakes in our region. I can never say it wouldn’t be followed by a larger earthquake but it’s not a sign to us that it’s building up to something larger. We would need to see a lot more happening.”

The PNSN has talked about the shake alert System we have here in WA now -- you can get it on your phone. Prof Tobin says the system did catch this morning’s quake and measured it close to its magnitude. It was too small to send an alert, but he did say this morning’s quake proves the system does work.

According to the Michigan Technological Institute, quakes between 2.5 and 5.4 are often felt, but only cause minor damage.

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