RUMFORD — Explosions heard on Wednesday morning by residents from Peru to Andover were sonic booms from Navy fighter jets and not an earthquake, according to Jim Miclon at Oxford Regional Communications Center in Paris.

Within seconds of 10:50 a.m., the Oxford County dispatching center was flooded with 911 calls from residents in Peru, Mexico, Rumford and Andover.

“I think most of them were from people … complaining about loud explosions,” Miclon said shortly before noon. “It was F-18 fighters practicing. We confirmed it with the Navy military base in Boston and Vermont.”

The sonic booms that also shook some buildings will likely occur again at 3 p.m. when the jets fly back over western Maine, according to Scott Parker, director of the Oxford County Emergency Management Agency in Paris.

Maine officials had no warning this morning of the fly over, but not so for this afternoon.

“It was just the right hand not talking to the left hand, kind of like what happened in New York, but on a rural scale,” Parker said.

“But instead of having a big Boeing 747 or 737 fly over, it was two Navy fighters enjoying western Maine, basically,” he added.

Because it involved a training mission, Parker said, the Navy doesn’t have to notify anyone.

But it would have been nice, he added, if only to forewarn emergency dispatchers or alert the public and prevent a sudden influx of 911 calls.

Some people even attributed the noise and building vibrations to an earthquake.

One caller to the Rumford Falls Times said it was an earthquake in Newfoundland.

Two Maine geologists — Woodrow B. Thompson and Henry N. Berry in Augusta — confirmed that an earthquake did happen in Newfoundland, but at the wrong time and too far away to be felt here.

Berry said the 3.3 magnitude temblor happened at 9:30 p.m. on Tuesday. He said a 3.3 would only be felt within a radius of 100 miles from the epicenter. Instead of loud booms, it would consist of waving ground, which might cause motion sickness.

“We haven’t seen any reports of another one more recently,” Thompson said. “I suspect sonic booms, unless somebody was blasting in the area.”