As new earthquake rattles South Carolina, an expert gives insight
ELGIN, S.C. - The United States Geological Survey said an early morning earthquake hit the Midlands on Saturday, the latest in a swarm of them in recent years.
The quake 4.1 miles east-southeast of Elgin had a magnitude of 2.6 and a depth of two kilometers. It hit around 5:33 a.m.
Seismologists say there have been nearly 100 of these small earthquakes since the swarm began in late 2021.
Daniel Frost, an assistant professor at the University of South Carolina, said this is one of the larger swarms he studied.
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He, along with another researcher from Georgia Tech, placed 87 earthquake-detecting devices in the area in October of 2022 to study the activity and try to get answers.
While the investigation into Kershaw County’s rumblings is ongoing, Frost said they have come to some conclusions.
Frost said this is happening around Elgin because of a 200-plus million-year-old fault system, and it is simply reactivating.
Why it is happening now, though, is something seismologists are still studying.
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Frost said that it could be fluids from the Wateree River getting into the fault.
“From earthquake physics, we understand it’s possible,” he said. “If there’s water in the fault, it allows the fault to slide more easily. So it’s plausible at this point that fluids on the fault or on these preexisting faults led to them breaking or have led to this swarm, but that’s still inconclusive, we’re struggling to find the relationship that we’d need to conclude that.”
According to Frost and other experts, people living in Elgin should rest assured that this swarm does not appear to be indicative that a larger one is coming.
These faults, Frost said, are not big enough to produce earthquakes much stronger than the ones the Midlands has been experiencing.
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“In Elgin, South Carolina, I don’t think we have a risk of any larger earthquake ever occurring,” he said. “If you were asking me about Charleston, South Carolina, I’d give you a different answer because we have a historic precedent of there being very large earthquakes in Charleston, South Carolina. But in Elgin, we have no known record of there being large earthquakes.”
One question that has eluded seismologists is how long the swarm could last.
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