A small tremor centered beneath the Millsfield community seven miles north of Dyersburg was felt across the area Saturday afternoon. No damage was reported from the magnitude 3.0 earthquake, though emergency dispatchers for the county and city said they were inundated with calls from residents reporting the event.

“I was sitting in my recliner asleep when I heard this loud “boom,” said David Walker, a county commissioner who lives in the Millsfield area. “I thought it was an explosion – it sounded like a stick of dynamite – and everything shook. It lasted a split-second and was over as soon as it started. I thought ‘What in the world was that?’’”

The temblor is the third minor quake to be recorded in the Dyersburg area since April 14, when a 2.0 magnitude event was monitored from an area beneath Finley, five miles west of the city. A 1.2 magnitude event was recorded on April 15 one mile west-southwest of Ridgely.

Although tremors too small to be felt are recorded across the New Madrid Earthquake Zone, most are not powerful to be felt. According to the Center for Earthquake Research and Information at the University of Memphis, the last tremor to be felt in the Dyersburg area was on May 27, 1995, when a magnitude 3.0 quake was measured from near Miston.