Powerful Earthquake Jolts Alaska
Monday, June 28th, 2004 Catastrophe PropertyA brief earthquake struck the Midwest early Monday, rattling windows and awakening sleeping residents from Wisconsin south to Missouri and from Indiana west to Iowa. No injuries were reported from the quake, which occurred about 1:11 a.m. CT. Brian Lassige, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Colorado, said the quake was magnitude 4.5, and its epicenter was about eight miles northwest of Ottawa in northern Illinois, close to the small village of Troy Grove. The rural area is about 70 miles west of Chicago. Initial reports indicated no major damage from the temblor, although police agencies and radio stations within the quake area were inundated with telephone calls. "It was mayhem around here for a while," said Pattie Burke, a dispatcher for the Ottawa Police. "We had more than 200 calls from residents in a short period of time, all of them wanting to know what had happened.
