Harvard Geophysicists Predict No More Quakes Here Soon

Scientists in the Boston area will record for a few more weeks small aftershocks from the earthquake that shook New England Saturday, but it is unlikely that another eruption will occur soon, Harvard geophysicists said yesterday.

Though predicting earthquakes is an "in-exact science," Adam M. Dziewonski, professor of Geology, said yesterday that another one of the same magnitude--about 5.8 on the Richter scale--will erupt again in the near future.

Over 80 aftershocks from the earthquake, which struck a sparsely populated area of New Brunswick, Canada, have occured since the eruption Saturday. The largest of these shook the northeast coastal region on Tuesday.

Saturday's earthquake, which struck at 7:45 a.m., was the largest to hit the region in 40 years, Dziewonski said. The biggest ever recorded in the area occured in 1755, when there were reports of fallen chimneys, he added.

The relative infrequency of earthquakes in this region in the past 200 years makes it unlikely that another one of the same magnitude will occur in the near future, John Haller, professor of Geology, said yesterday. Earthquakes in the northeast do not normally trigger a whole line of successive quakes, as they do around the Pacific Ocean, he added.

The first aftershock took place at 11:45 a.m. on Saturday, with a magnitude of five on the Richter scale. Joseph M. Steim, a graduate student in Geology, said he was lying on a coach in Brookline when he felt a "very subtle" sway.

Steim said he knew it was an earthquake because the frequency of vibration was lower than one would expect from an explosion or a truck rumbling. Another giveaway was the complete silence that accompanied the sway, Steim said.