The town of Irmo, which is south and west of Columbia, South Carolina, was rocked by an earthquake today, with hundreds of people reporting having felt it. According to USGS, at 12:17 pm, a magnitude 3.0 earthquake struck the area from a depth of only 0.2 km.
Today’s earthquake was the strongest of 4 to strike the same area in the last 13 days. On February 13, a magnitude 2.8 earthquake struck here; on February 15, a magnitude 2.0 earthquake struck, and on February 16, a magnitude 1.8 earthquake struck.
All of the earthquakes here have been located on the east side of Lake Murray, a 50,000-acre reservoir held back by a dam. If the dam broke from a natural disaster like an earthquake, it would send roughly 650 billion gallons of water into nearby communities. According to Kim Stenson, the Director of the South Carolina Emergency Management Division, said a breach of the dam would subject the nearby Midlands area to catastrophic flooding, with water reaching south of I-20 into the Congaree Swamp…