SOUTHERN COLORADO -- Authorities are assessing the damage following a rare magnitude-5.3 earthquake that rattled the Colorado-New Mexico border but apparently caused no injuries.
The U.S. Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo. reports the Colorado quake hit at 11:46 p.m. MDT about nine miles southwest of Trinidad. It was felt in a relatively large area of southern Colorado and northern New Mexico.
About eight miles from Trinidad, Big 4 County Store, a liquor store, suffered damage including broken bottles and cracks in the walls.
"First you heard it, then you felt it," Ray Moltrer, the store owner, said. "It sounded like thunder. We were scared."
Ray's store is just one mile from the epicenter of the quake, and is also just a few minutes from where Ray, his wife and two kids live. They were home at the time of the earthquake.
"I can only imagine what the people in Haiti and Japan went through," Ray said.
Monday night's temblor in southern Colorado was the strongest to hit the state in more than 40 years. It struck just hours before a magnitude-5.9 quake in Virginia, also rare for that area, shook much of Washington, D.C., and the East Coast.
"If you're religious, maybe it's an 'End of Days,'" Ray said in reference to the quakes that hit throughout the U.S. Monday and Tuesday.
No injuries have been reported in Colorado.
Las Animas County Sheriff Jim Casias said authorities have been assessing damage that included a porch collapse and a partially collapsed roof.
The quake also toppled chimneys and triggered minor rockslides in the arid, mountainous region about 180 miles south of Denver.
Information from the Associated Press was used in this story.
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