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Many North Country residents were just waking up, feeding still-sleepy babies, having a first cup of morning coffee, taking showers.

Just about everyone heard the first deep rumble, then felt a jolt and a steady shaking as the strongest earthquake in four decades rocked the area last Friday morning.

The earthquake, registering 5.2 on the Richter Scale, rocked the Northeast from Montreal to New York City and west to Buffalo at 6:18 a.m., just as an orange-yellow sunrise began to illuminate the sky.

Two aftershocks, one at 6:40 a.m. and another at 6:59 a.m., measured 3.8 and 3.0 on the Richter Scale, respectively.

“There was a rushing wind, and the sound of a sustained explosion and then the house shook like pills being rolled in a great hand,” said Jack Vitvitsky, of Old Military Road. “All the woodwork in the house creaked under the strain; the frequency of agitation was two or three times per second.”

The earthquake was the strongest since a similar one in 1944 rattled Massena, said David Simpson, associate director for seismology at the Lamont Doherty Geological Observatory of Columbia University.

The quake’s center near Newcomb was 8 kilometers under the Earth’s crust.

“I like to make an analogy of dropping a stone in a lake when describing its impact,” Mr. Simpson said. “The center of the disturbance was small, near Newcomb, but areas surrounding the epicenter felt the shock, too, like waves moving out from the point a rock hits the water.”

Jean Kerst, superintendent of buildings and grounds at the Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake, lives in a house near the museum complex.

“I didn’t notice the shaking as much as I did the noise,” Mr. Kerst said. “The noise is what got me up. The first boom was really loud. Imagine being in a hollow room with a freight train passing over your head. That’s what it was like.

“At first I was worried that something was wrong with the big furnace here, but it didn’t quit.

“I ran to the main building of the museum and passed the seismograph, which was going crazy. Then I knew what it was. The seismograph’s wire was going so fast over the paper that it didn’t leave a trail.”

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Oval opening soon

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The Olympic Speedskating Oval will have its earliest opening ever this year, Olympic Authority President Ned Harkness said last Wednesday at a meeting of the Saranac Lake Business Association.

Mr. Harkness said the oval would have ice “no later” than Oct. 19. Following his remarks to the business association, however, the opening date was moved up to Oct. 16.

Because of the early opening, a costly trip to Europe by the U.S. Speedskating Team will become unnecessary. The team is now housed at Lake Placid’s U.S. Olympic Training Center.

The original plan was to use the oval to park cars during the Grateful Dead concert on Oct. 17 and ice the oval later. Those plans were altered to accommodate the U.S. speedskaters. Concert-goers’ cars will be parked elsewhere.

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Uihlein Mercy Center

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A recent compromise may give Uihlein Mercy Center’s expansion plans, stalled for three years, a new chance for success.

The 16-year-old Lake Placid nursing home recently agreed to scale down its plans from 96 to 60 additional beds. Sister Mary Camillus, administrator, hopes the new plan will get a favorable nod from the state Health Systems Agency and the Health Department.

Franklin County Legislator Cliff Donaldson, who has been working with Uihlein Mercy Center for two years on its plan, said word was received in August that a compromise was possible.

Negotiations had stalled on Uihlein’s 96-bed proposal.

“The only option we has was to go with 60 beds,” Sr. Camillus said. “We are now readying our application for 60.”

The reduced project would decrease the cost of expansion from $5 million to $3.2 million, Sr. Camillus said.

The funding will hopefully be provided through Farmers Home Administration loans and private donations, she noted.

The project could provide 60 new jobs at the Mercy Center. Sr. Camillus said, stressing that jobs would be provided in constructing the complex.

The original plans called for three new clusters, identical to the ones already existing, to be extended from the main building. The new plans call for two clusters, with the third being dropped from the plans.

Uihlein presently has 105 people who would like to become residents on a waiting list. Most would require SNF, or skilled nursing beds.

The trend these days is for those who do not need the skilled nursing care Uihlein can provide to stay with their families, Sr. Camillus said.