Amelia Sheriff Rick Walker said he was unaware of any reports of damage.

“So far they just got a bunch of calls about the noise and the shaking,” Walker said. “Hope we don’t have any big aftershocks.”

Carolyn Bishop, who lives in western Powhatan near the border with Amelia, said the earthquake “sounded like a bomb.”

She said her house shook for a second or two, though she didn’t notice anything in the house fall to the floor. Nonetheless, she said it felt serious enough that she planned to check her home for structural damage at dawn.

Powhatan resident Jim Shelton said he heard what sounded like a bomb but did not see any damage to his home.

“It rattled the house for about three or four seconds and then it was gone,” he said.

Hoover said 3.2-magnitude quakes typically aren’t powerful enough to cause major structural damage. But they can knock items off shelves, particularly in homes close to the epicenter.

She said earthquakes on the East Coast, even mild ones, are typically felt in a wider area than are quakes that strike in California and other West Coast areas.