WKRN, Nashville, Tennessee News, Weather, and Sports |Shockwaves reach into Middle Tenn.

Shockwaves reach into Middle Tenn.

Millions in Illinois and in surrounding states reaching as far south as Tennessee were shaken from their beds by an earthquake early Friday morning.

The quake was centered in the West Salem area of Illinois near the Wabash River, north of Interstate 64 and Evansville, Indiana.

People as far north as Michigan, west to St. Louis and south to Tennessee and Georgia felt it.

The quake occurred just after 4:30 a.m. and registered 5.2 on the Richter scale.

It rattled windows, shook homes and damaged building hundreds of miles away from its epicenter.

Just after 11 a.m., a 4.5 magnitude aftershock shook the area.

While minor is most places, the quake's damage forced officials in Mt Carmel, Illinois to condemn a 100-year-old school building turned apartment complex.

Under a nearby mobile home, the shockwaves broke water lines and cracked cinder blocks.

The Wabash County sheriff said the most significant damage occurred in Mt Carmel.

Damage was reported in Louisville, Kentucky.  A small portion of an old brick building had crumbled during the earthquake.

In Middle Tennessee, the quake woke up many but no damage was reported.

News 2 talked to a woman in Hendersonville who felt her house shaking, but she said no one else in her family noticed it.

Jeanette Scott said she was awake and in her bedroom when all of a sudden things started shaking.

"The bed was shaking, the vibration, the walls... Everything was shaking in my room,"
 she told News 2.

Scott, however, said nothing seemed to be shifted around and there wasn't any damage at her house.

She described the experience as "a rumble and very strong vibration."

"You could feel it.  It went through your feet.  I went downstairs, and my husband was down stairs, and I said, ‘I just felt an earthquake.'  He was down there getting ready to leave, and he said, ‘I didn't feel anything.' I said, ‘I know I felt earthquake.'"

Scott said she checked a national Web site to see if it really was an earthquake that she felt, but she said it hadn't been recorded yet.

"I know we had an earthquake.  I flipped on Channel 2 News and sure enough, we were getting reports of an earthquake," she said.

Scott said the experience was scary, but she felt relieved once she had some answers.

People in other counties also felt the shake.

Calls poured into area television stations, radio stations, and emergencies agencies once the earthquake was felt.

The quake occurred on the Wabash fault line, which impacts Indiana, Illinois and Kentucky and is an extension of the Madrid fault line, located near Memphis.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, about 150 to 200 quakes are recorded on the Wabash line each year.  Most are too small to feel.

Friday morning's earthquake was nearly the most powerful in Illinois history.

The U.S. Geological Survey states the strongest earthquake to hit Illinois was a 5.3 tremor in 1968.

Stay tuned to News 2 for more local reactions to the earthquake.