Posted Saturday, Sept. 26, 1998
Shawn Woodruff knocks out bricks from a chimney that collapsed on top of a home in Greenville during a small earthquake Friday, Sept. 25. No one was injured in the incident, but Woodruff spent most of the evening helping his neighbor to remove the collapsed chimney before it caused any more damage to the roof of the house. (AP)
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The one that struck Friday afternoon, reportedly centered in West Salem Township north of Greenville, knocked down a few chimneys, cracked some windows and made a real mess at area supermarkets.
"We had spaghetti sauce and salad dressing all over the place," said Carol Richards, an employee at Carl's IGA in Greenville.
If a package could be cleaned off, it was put back on the shelf, he said. Much of it was headed for the dumpster.
There was no structural damage to the building, Ms. Richards said.
Trinity Industries-Greenville Rail Car Division reported the tremor's only casualty Friday evening. A worker was knocked to the ground and treated at UPMC Horizon, Greenville.
The quake downed high voltage lines at Trinity's North Plant, where there was some transformer and building damage, General Manager Don Craine said.
"This was a good one," said Craine, who was in the office at the time of the quake, which caused half-inch cracks in concrete at the plant.
UPMC Horizon's Greenville hospital wasn't damaged, but there were some hairline fractures in the human services building, said George Alexander, chief of security.
Greenville's only high-rise, the Greenville House, was not damaged, though several residents reported dishes and knick-knacks falling.
"We felt it on the seventh, eighth, and ninth floors," a spokeswoman at the Greenville House said.
The quake caused a few cracks in the wall at Phil Godfrey Motors in downtown Greenville, but the steel beams in the building will keep it structurally sound.
A dispatcher at the Greenville-West Salem Township police station said they had received more than a hundred calls reporting things being knocked off walls and shelves, windows broken and chimneys damaged but no major damage.
