Mystery ‘booms’ rattle Massachusetts city

Published 12:00 pm Saturday, August 14, 2021

PEABODY, Mass. — Tracy Valletti was relaxing and watching television at her home in this city in Boston’s northern suburbs one night last week when her home shook.

“I was really jolted. It was really scary,” she said, adding that she heard a sort of “boom.”

Valletti didn’t know it at the time but what she and neighbors felt was a 1.2 magnitude earthquake, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

It’s nice to have an explanation, Valletti now says, but the quake and the unexplained “boom” was just one in a series.

Not a week earlier, Mayor Ted Bettencourt had reached out to Samantha Phillips, director of the state Emergency Management Agency, asking for help tracking the source of the upsetting tremors.

“In recent months, residents living in several areas of our city have reported hearing loud explosions, some of which have caused their homes to shake,” he wrote. “Both the Peabody Police Department and the Peabody Fire Department have investigated these reports but have been unable to determine the source of the blasts.”

Bettencourt noted two earthquakes were recorded in and around this city, about 15 miles north of Boston, over the course of a week: There was a 1.4 magnitude quake early on July 25 and the 1.2 quake Valletti felt just before 7 p.m. on Aug. 4.

But many of the “explosions,” he noted, do not coincide with the earthquakes.

Valletti, who first experienced a tremor back in February, said the explosion-like events are happening more often.

“There were six of these booms throughout the day,” she said about Aug. 4, adding that since February, she’s felt at least eight or nine.

Others in her leafy neighborhood, she said, have experienced more.

Twice on Aug. 4, she said, the tremors were so significant that neighbors left their homes and gathered outside to try and figure out what had caused the explosion.

“We all were looking at each other like, ‘Did you hear that? Did you feel that?’” she said.

Some noted their still-fresh memories of the September 2018 natural gas explosions in a suburb several miles away.

In his letter, Bettencourt acknowledged how frightening the explosions have been for residents.

While reports have come from other neighborhoods, the majority of calls appear to be coming from Valletti’s neighborhood, according to Deputy Fire Chief Richard Nelson.

“I know they are looking more into the seismic background of it to see if they can come up with something more, but honestly this is not anything we’ve dealt with before,” he said. “I know they’ve attributed two of them to earthquakes, but other than that, I don’t know.”

Both Valletti and Nelson noted that in all their years in Peabody, they can’t recall a time where there have been so many unexplained booms.

“The first (boom), I did briefly feel something, but it’s weird,” Nelson said. “You don’t think you’re going to get earthquakes out here, you know? That’s San Francisco — not Peabody.”

Erin Nolan writes for The Salem News. She can be reached by email at enolan@salemnews.com