CLEVELAND — Ohio isn't the place that comes to mind when you think about earthquakes, but over the past few years, there have been multiple earthquakes in Lake and Ashtabula counties, some even causing damage.

What You Need To Know

  • A winery owner said he found a big mess after a recent earthquake

  • Jeff Fox with the Ohio Geological Survey said they are also monitoring the recent earthquakes

  • The earthquake that stood out to Debevc is the 2.6-magnitude earthquake on Jan. 5

Tony Debevc has been overseeing his family owned winery in Madison since 1972. 

"For 50 some years we’ve been making and selling our wine from our own grapes as an entrepreneurial type of business," he said.

But in all his years here, he said he still gets surprises.

"It was this rumbling sonic boom type of noise," he said.

Multiple small earthquakes have hit Lake and Ashtabula counties in recent years. Debonne Vineyards is one of many wineries near the epicenter.

The earthquake that stood out to Debevc is the 2.6-magnitude earthquake on Jan. 5. 

"And we came in here, as soon as we entered that entrance way in the room, somebody got sticky feet right away, and so it was kind of a big mess pulling this stuff out and I’m sure there is good old beer somewhere stuck underneath there that we didn’t get to,"he said.

Debevc said the earthquake caused these beer taps to shake loose and leak, flooding most of this area. 

Jeff Fox with the Ohio Geological Survey said they also took note of the recent quakes.

"We’ve increased our number of seismic stations in northeast Ohio last year. We’re planning on adding a couple more and upgrading a few more in that part of Ohio," he said. "This area is not any stranger to earthquakes. It’s probably our most seismically active region in Ohio." 

So why do these small quakes continue to happen?

"Where as faults in the eastern United States are deeply buried, we just, you know, there’s probably a lot more down there that we are not aware of. They lie dormant until isostatic stresses tend to trigger them," he said. "It’s just hard to tell when and where these things are going unless a lot of money has been spent on 3D seismic imaging of the entire region. That’s just unfeasible so we just have to wait around for earthquakes to happen to know that these faults exist unless they’ve been previously mapped."

For Debevc, these small earthquakes are starting to make him wonder what could happen if a bigger one hits. But he said he has other things to worry about.

"It’s not something that’s top of mind, I think it’s something you know that we are discussing we’d like to know if more information arises, but I think I have more headaches with the IRS and the government than I do to earthquakes right now," he said.