Buffalo seismic event draws mixed reactions from UB community

Students and staff respond to the 3.8 magnitude earthquake that shook Buffalo and surrounding areas Monday morning

Makaela Grijalva thought she was dreaming when an earthquake struck Buffalo this Monday morning.

Still half asleep at 6:15 a.m. Grijalva said the quake took her by surprise.

“I jumped off the bed, and I felt the floor lifting up and I’m like, holy s—t,” Grijalva, a freshman undecided major, said.

Alarmed, but unaware that what she experienced was an earthquake, Grijalva assumed the Buffalo wind was the cause of the commotion.

Other students also initially thought strong winds were shaking their buildings. Chelsea Muentes, a freshman from New York City, recalls her windows shaking and feeling like “the building was going to tip over.”

Many students were shocked to find out about the event, unaware of Buffalo’s perceivable earthquakes.

Augustine Peprah Frimpong, a junior media study major, actually slept through the quake. He found out about it later that morning from his friends, whom he assumed were joking.

“It’s very jarring to be able to sleep through something so quakey,” Peprah Frimpong said. “I definitely kind of got worried because if this was a bad earthquake and the ceiling had collapsed onto me, I would have probably died.”

Dr. Nick Henshue, an ecology professor at UB, was unfazed by the seismic event.

Henshue says the Monday morning earthquake wasn’t like the ones he experienced while living in San Diego.

“There was no noise [in San Diego], it was just kind of this side to side undulation,” Henshue said. “As opposed to today [in Buffalo], it felt like it was the same kind of noise when they knocked down the towers at Tonawanda Coke.”

Dr. Tracy Gregg, a geology professor at UB, has lived in Buffalo since 1998. She was excited because, although she experienced three earthquakes before, this was

“It’s sad because Hyundai and Kia are pretty affordable cars and the ones that are broken into are the ones that are a little bit older,” Wachowiak said. “I never thought this would happen in my neighborhood.”

Alysson Bermudez, a first-year chemistry Ph.D. student, had her Hyundai stolen the same week as Wachowiak.

Unable to find her car, she thought it was towed or parked in the wrong place. Phone calls to multiple local towing lots didn’t solve Bermudez’s problem, and one towing company told her that her car “probably got stolen because it’s a Hyundai.”

Bermudez then called UPD, who advised her to call Amherst Police and file a police report. Police found her car a few hours after the report was filed.

While retrieving her car from the police

Even with these new provisions from the university, Bermudez said that once she gets her car back, she plans on selling it.

“I heard stories about people getting their Hyundais stolen twice, even when they took precautions,” Bermudez said.

“That’s just too much stress to handle.”

So far, the police don’t know who stole her car, but she hopes that the individuals who did it will be reprimanded, and face the appropriate consequences.

“People who take part in this trend need to learn that this isn’t okay, because it’s actually interfering with people’s lives,” Bermudez said.

Email: victoria.hill@ubspectrum.com the first one she felt.

“I immediately knew what was going on,” Dr. Gregg said. “And it’s Buffalo, so I wasn’t worried about damage or my safety or anything like that.”

Earthquakes are common in Buffalo due to the Clarendon-Linden fault system.

If the earthquakes are less than 2.5 magnitude, humans are unable to detect them without instruments. These small earthquakes occur several times a year.

According to research conducted by Robert Jacobi, a former geology professor at UB, “if the Clarendon-Linden fault system were to go off, it could generate a magnitude 6.0-6.5 earthquake.”

“The probability of this happening in our lifetimes is really really low, —so low that I don’t worry about it,” Dr. Gregg said. “These smallish quakes will continue to happen though.”