Earthquake Shakes Michigan Church While Pastor Calls For Help With Nepal Quake Relief [VIDEO]
PAW PAW (WWJ) -- Most of southern Michigan was unexpectedly shaken on Saturday afternoon by a 4.2 magnitude earthquake centered near Kalamazoo.
Not far away in Paw Paw, Michigan, Pastor Michael Taylor of the Paw Paw Seventh-Day Adventist Church was appealing to the congregation to help with relief for the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit Nepal on April 25.
Little did anyone know, Michigan was about to experience a quake of its own.
In a video of the sermon posted by the church on YouTube, the camera can be seen shaking before Taylor and the crowd realize what had happened.
Taylor told the crowd to just "act natural" and "play it off" before returning to his plea for Nepal.
"Our church is located close enough to a main road that we're used to big trucks coming by and shaking the church a little bit, but when it didn't stop shaking I realized that something was going on," Taylor told WWJ Newsradio 950's Lauren Barthold.
"Obviously as a pastor, I thought something -- I don't know if you want to call it a divine sense of humor or what -- but I saw that and thought 'that's just, that's amazing to me," Taylor said about finding out later that it was in fact an earthquake.
[MORE: Allen Park Native Still Missing In Nepal Following Massive Earthquake]
Paul Caruso, a geophysicist with the United States Geological Survey, said an earthquake with a magnitude of 4.2 and a depth of focus of 5.9 km was measured around 12:23 p.m. about nine miles southeast of Kalamazoo, near Galesburg.
Dozens of residents in several different regions beyond Kalamazoo — from Mount Pleasant and Sterling Heights to Lansing and even as far as Cleveland, Ohio — called the WWJ Newsroom and reported feeling a rumble and the ground shake for between five and 10 seconds.
Despite being felt hundreds of miles away, no damage or injuries have been reported.
The strongest earthquake in Michigan history was a 4.6 magnitude in nearly the exact same location in August 1947.