Residents of Charleston, South Carolina, like those living in all coastal areas, expect the occasional hurricane and most residents are experienced at preparing for such disasters. Hurricanes usually take a matter of hours to pass over an area and inflict their damage. The disaster that struck Charleston, South Carolina on August 31, 1886, caused heavy damage and death in slightly less than one minute!
It was Tuesday night and by 9:30 p.m., most kerosene lamps had been turned off and most candles snuffed. Most of the residents of Charleston were in bed, some anticipating school the next day, some expecting to be at their jobs.

At approximately 9:51 p.m. the ground began to shake violently. People were thrown from their beds, ceilings fell in and residents scrambled for safety. In some homes, walls collapsed, causing the roof to fall in, trapping the residents. Entire buildings swayed and actually shifted on their foundations. In less than one minute, the ground stopped shaking. Residents rushed outside to safety.

At approximately 9:58 p.m. a very strong aftershock was felt, bringing about more destruction. Throughout that night and the following day, six more aftershocks occurred. Charleston lay in shambles!

By this time, Charleston's three major medical facilities, City Hospital, Roper Hospital and the Medical College of South Carolina were severely damaged. The main police station and the jail were both badly damaged and some prisoners escaped.

Dam failures caused serious flooding near Langley in Aiken County, drowning an unknown number of people. The flooding caused the derailment of two trains; the fireman on one train was killed. Another train, southbound from Columbia with over 100 passengers was thrown into the air, but there were no reported fatalities.

It was later learned that at least 124 people had died as a result of the earthquake; about forty people had died during the first two shocks as a result of collapsing structures in South Carolina and neighboring Georgia. Tybee Island in Georgia had major structural damage. Structural damage was reported as far away as central Alabama, central Ohio, eastern Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia. Residents of Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, Milwaukee and Bermuda felt the quake. It was also felt in Cuba.

In the days that followed, a massive migration occurred of refugees traveling away from the South Carolina Low Country to points inland in an attempt to escape the aftershocks. Of Charleston's 60,000 residents, an estimated 40,000 were left homeless. Some erected tents in the city's parks and lived there until they could make better arrangements.

An assessment of the damages was made. It was determined that the structures had combined damages of six million dollars. The appraisal value of all the structures in Charleston at that time was twenty-four million. There were approximately two-thousand buildings damaged. It was the largest earthquake to ever occur in the eastern United States. Had the Richter Scale existed at that time, it is estimated that the earthquake would have registered as a magnitude between 6.6 and 7.3. Over three hundred aftershocks from the quake continued for another thirty-five years.

Prior to this devastating earthquake, Charleston had very little or no previous history of seismic activity.