AU SABLE FORKS, N.Y. — As inspectors assessed structural damage caused by an earthquake, residents across the region surveyed their homes and cleaned up shattered glass and broken chimneys Sunday.
"There are some homes that have been damaged, and some apartment buildings, but we're still in the assessment process for that," said Kelly Donoghue, assistant director of Clinton County Emergency Services.
At least three churches serving this Adirondack village, about 20 miles southwest of Plattsburgh, suffered damage in the quake, which registered magnitude 5.1 on Saturday morning.
"Quite a few cracks have shown up inside, but there are more problems outside," the Rev. Philip Allen of Holy Name Church told the Plattsburgh Press-Republican. "The walls shifted some. You can really notice it on the outside."
At Au Sable Forks United Methodist Church, workers removed debris from the partially collapsed chimney, which punched a hole in the roof, the Rev. Virginia Pierce said. Walls were cracked ceiling to floor, but a large stained-glass window escaped damage, she said.
The Methodists accepted an invitation from Allen to use his congregation's temporary place of worship: the Holy Name School gym.
At St. James Episcopal Church, mortar fell from the stone exterior but the interior of the church was not damaged, the Rev. Alan Macnab said. The church planned to continue holding its services inside the building.
Black Brook Supervisor Ricky Nolan, who traveled house to house with Red Cross officials Saturday, said many homes had buckled floors, cracked walls and basements, broken pipes, and ruined wells.
"It looks on the surface as if there's nothing, but there's some serious stuff here," Nolan told the Times Union of Albany.
The quake was centered 15 miles southwest of Plattsburgh, said William Ott, a seismologist at Weston Observatory at Boston College. Its tremors were felt as far away as Maryland, some 400 miles to the south.
The area sits on the Northern New York-Western Quebec Seismic Zone, a moderately active belt that extends into Canada, according to Frank Revetta, a geology professor at the State University of New York in Potsdam.
The largest earthquake recorded in New York, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, was a 5.8 magnitude quake in 1944 that was centered in Massena, about 3 miles from the Canadian border.