Revelation 11:12,13 Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, “Come up here.” And they went up to heaven in a cloud, while their enemies looked on. At that very hour there was a severe earthquake and a tenth of the city collapsed. Seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the survivors were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven.
Four earthquakes hit Oklahoma on Monday, including one of magnitude 4.4, and geologists believe that an even bigger one could be coming.
The United States Geological Survey notes the chance for a magnitude 5.5 quake has risen significantly, given the rise in the state’s seismic activity.
KFOR notes that more than 5,000 earthquakes have been recorded in Oklahoma this year, and a May 2014 report from the USGS noted a nearly 50 percent increase in the state’s earthquakes since October 2013.
The USGS report included a statistical analysis of Oklahoma’s earthquake rates and found the increase did not appear to be a part of the typical fluctuations found in nature. The analysis found that one of the likely contributing factors to the increase in wastewater being injected into geologic formations deep underground. Such induction-induced seismicity, as the USGS refers to it, has also been documented in Arkansas, Ohio and Texas.
Oklahoma has a magnitude 5.6 earthquake on record. It occurred near Prague, which is about 70 miles east of Oklahoma City, in 2011 and damaged homes and buildings, according to media reports. The USGS report noted that before that the Prague quake, the previous highest earthquake in the state’s history was a magnitude 5.5 quake in 1952.
In August, the Oklahoma Corporation Commission implemented a plan to reduce wastewater disposal in some parts of the state where seismic activity had risen sharply in an effort to mitigate the quake impacts.
Still, there have been 153 earthquakes of magnitude 2.5 or greater in Oklahoma in the past 30 days alone, according to the USGS.
The magnitude 4.4 quake that hit Monday was located near Cherokee, some 140 miles northwest of Oklahoma City. NewsOK reported it was located only a few miles from a 4.7 earthquake that hit last Thursday and was the state’s highest recorded seismic activity since 2011.
