An emergency vehicle waits at the scene where rubble from earthquake damage lies strewn along a sidewalk in an old section of Louisville, Ky., Friday, April 18, 2008. The 5.2 magnitude earthquake, centered in southern Illinois, rattled skyscrapers in Chicago's Loop and homes in Cincinnati but appeared to cause no major injuries or damage.

Lawrence residents felt the rumblings of the 5.2 magnitude earthquake that shook Southern Illinois and Indiana at 4:37 a.m. today.

The earthquake was centered six miles from West Salem, Ill., and 45 miles from Evansville, Ind. Besides Lawrence, it was felt in such distant cities as Milwaukee, Des Moines, Iowa, and Atlanta, nearly 400 miles to the southeast.

In Mount Carmel, 15 southeast of the epicenter, a woman was trapped in her home by a collapsed porch but was quickly freed and wasn’t hurt, said Mickie Smith, a dispatcher at the police department. The department took numerous other calls, though none reported anything more serious than objects knocked off walls and out of shelves, she said.

The quake is believed to have involved the Wabash fault, a northern extension of the New Madrid fault about six miles north of Mount Carmel, Ill., said United States Geological Survey geophysicist Randy Baldwin.

The last earthquake in the region to approach the severity of Friday’s temblor was a 5.0 magnitude quake that shook a nearby area in 2002, Baldwin said.