ST. LOUIS, Mo. — A predawn earthquake rattled Southern Illinois and eastern Missouri early Friday, waking up neighborhoods across the area and flooding police departments with calls.

The quake measured 5.2 on the Richter scale and occurred at 4:37 a.m. CDT. It was centered in southeastern Illinois, five miles from the town of Bellmont, according to Timothy M. Kusky, director of the Center for Environmental Sciences at St. Louis University.

"It was felt rather strongly here in St. Louis," Kusky said. "It woke many people up. It woke me up. It woke my cat up."

People felt it the shaking anywhere from five to 30 seconds.

Some reported that windows or foundations had cracked, but police had no immediate reports of major damage.

"We've had a lot of calls from people whose windows rattled, stuff fell off of shelves, but no damage," said Sgt. Michael Gordon of the Alton Police Department.

The quake was the result of the moving apart of two tectonic plates along the New Madrid fault, well-known to St. Louis area residents. But instead of being along the main fault line, primarily along the Mississippi River, it originated from a spur known as the Wabash Valley Seismic Zone. The epicenter was in Bellmont, Ill., 127 miles east of St. Louis.

The New Madrid Fault is a weak spot in the center of the country caused by the stretching millions of years ago of the earth's surface, the North American Plate, along the fault lines in California and on the mid-Atlantic ridge, Kusky said.

"A 5.2 earthquake is pretty high for here but not very high for around the world," Kusky said. "It takes a little bit more to cause major damage."

Friday's earthquake came on the anniversary of the 1906 earthquake that reached 7.8 magnitude and destroyed much of San Francisco.

No serious damage was reported in St. Louis.

The earthquake didn't wake Vicki Rayborn, who lives in Bellmont. Turkey season did. Rayborn's husband had just left home to go hunting, so she was awake and watching television when the quake struck.

"The whole house started shaking and all my whatnots were falling," she said.

Along with the shaking came a mighty roar, she said, much like a thunderstorm or train. Her police scanner even talked about reports of a train derailment. "All the sirens were going off and the scanner talked about a derailment, and then they realized it was really an earthquake," she said.

In West Salem, Ill., a town of 1,100 people about seven miles from the epicenter, police chief Harvey Fenton said he felt his two-story brick home rumble for about 30 seconds.

"I thought it was going to collapse and I'd end up in the basement," Fenton said. "It was an exciting wake up call. I hear this big bolt, and my impression for the first second was, it was a thunder bolt or an explosion."