Tag Archives: Earthquake

Minor Earthquake Hits New Madrid Fault

A minor earthquake struck the New Madrid fault Tuesday, the second quake on the fault line in the last two weeks.

The magnitude 2.7 quake struck around 8:46 p.m. Tuesday about 5 miles from the town of New Madrid, Missouri.  The Center for Earthquake Research and Information (CERI) at the University of Memphis said the quake was 5.9 miles deep.

Residents in northwest Tennessee, southeast Missouri and western Kentucky all reported slight shaking from the quake.

It’s the second minor quake along the New Madrid Fault in two weeks.  A magnitude 3.5 quake struck near Memphis, Tennessee on August 25th.

The New Madrid fault line is twenty times larger than the San Andreas fault line in California.

One Missouri official is calling on residents to check to make sure they have earthquake coverage as part of their homeowners insurance.  The U.S. Geological Survey estimates the probability of a 7.5 or greater quake in the next 50 years at 7-10%, with the possibility of a quake stronger than 6.0 at 25-40%.

Small Earthquake Strikes West Tennessee Along New Madrid Fault

Residents of western Tennessee were given a jolt to their Wednesday morning commutes when a small earthquake struck around 8:26 a.m.

The magnitude 3.5 quake was centered about 16 miles northwest of Covington, TN or about 50 miles north of Memphis.

“I was just sitting down and I was inside of a building and it was just shaking, so I thought it was construction or something,” Covington resident Kiana Burnett told WMC-TV.

Local officials say there were no reports of damage and that inspections of bridges are taking place for safety reasons, not because they actually believe any bridge was damaged by the quake.

“What it means for the local person is if you were in Covington and weren’t in a car or something, or was just sitting somewhere, you probably felt an earthquake this morning, and that’s about all it means,” Dr. Mitch Withers of the University of Memphis Center for Earthquake Research and Information told WMC.

The quake struck along the New Madrid Fault, a massive fault line that is 20 times larger than the famed San Andreas fault in California.   Withers did remind reporters that just because this quake did not cause large damage, the fault line can cause massive damage from significant earthquakes.

Minor Quake Strikes Oakland Area

Some residents of the Easy Bay area didn’t need their alarm clocks to start the week as a magnitude 4.0 earthquake struck the area early Monday morning.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) reported the quake struck at 6:49 a.m., three miles away from Oakland, California.  The quake was felt throughout the Oakland/San Francisco area.

Oakland police Lt. Chris Bolton reported on the department’s official Twitter feed that they had no reports of injuries or damage from the quake.

The quake struck along the Hayward fault, a major fault that remains a concern for geologists in the area.  The scientists believe that the fault could produce a potentially catastrophic quake that could kill tens of thousands.  The Hayward fault is part of the San Andreas fault system.

The fault runs for more than 60 miles through the region from Fremont to Hayward.  The fault runs under hospitals, freeways and reservoirs.  It even runs from end zone to end zone at the football stadium for the University of California Berkeley.

The quake was followed by six aftershocks.

New Jersey Hit by Small Earthquake

Residents of central New Jersey were surprised Friday morning by a small earthquake.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) says a magnitude-2.7 quake struck around 3:41 a.m. centered 2 miles north of Bernardsville, NJ.  The quake had a depth of 3.5 miles.

“In the middle of the night we both looked at each other and said what the heck was that?,” resident Danielle Carlson told CBS New York.

“Kind of just like a thunder clap, like a rumble. I woke up because the windows were shaking,” resident Tom Wood added.

The USGS said there was no damage and quake of that magnitude usually does not show damage.  The agency added that quakes usually hit the region every two to three years, although the last quake to strike the area was in December 2014.

One resident said that she knew something was coming because of her dog’s strange behavior.

“The dog was pacing back-and-forth, very neurotic, she’d never been like that before,” Ruth Levin told NJ.com. “She was frightened and stayed next to me all night.”

The USGS admitted there is anecdotal evidence dating back millennia of animals acting in a strange manner hours or weeks before an earthquake.

Strong Earthquakes Strike Pacific Ring of Fire; Oklahoma Shaken Up

Two major earthquakes have struck along the northern and eastern sides of the Pacific Ring of Fire.

The quake was a 6.9 magnitude quake in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands around 9 p.m. local time.  The quake struck around a depth of 14 miles about 60 miles southwest of the village of Nikolski.  A number of aftershocks were reported after the main quake.

There were no reports of casualties or damage.

The second quake struck in Papua, an island in Indonesia.  The 7.0 magnitude quake struck about 6:41 a.m. on Monday in a heavily forested area about 150 miles west of the region’s provincial capital of Jayapura.

A teenage boy reportedly was killed as he fell into a river he was fishing in as the quake struck.  Several buildings were reported to have significant damage.

“The quake was felt very strongly for four seconds,” said Indonesian disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho. “Residents panicked and rushed out of their homes.”

Officials in the region said because of the strength of the quake and the mountainous area where it struck, landslides in the next few days are a very dangerous possibility.

Neither quake triggered a tsunami.

Meanwhile, the heartland of America was shaken when a series of quakes struck Oklahoma on Monday.

The first two quakes struck within minutes of each other Monday afternoon.  A third rattled the region later that evening.

The quakes were centered around 3 to 4 miles north-northeast of Crescent, Oklahoma.

The strongest, the second of the two initial quakes, registered at 4.5 on the Richter scale and was felt in Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, Kansas and Arkansas.  The evening quake measured magnitude 4.1.

Kick ‘em Jenny Putting Ships at Risk

An underwater volcano off the Granada coast is causing a threat to the shipping industry for the island.

Kick ‘em Jenny is off the country’s northern coast.  The threat level of the volcano currently sits at yellow after spending the weekend at the higher orange level.  The yellow threat level means that an eruption of the underwater volcano is possible and that ships should avoid the area of the volcano by a minimum of 1.5 kilometers.

The volcano, despite being 600 feet below the ocean surface, is a threat because a burst of gasses from the volcano could instantly sink a ship in the waters above.  The process, called “degassing”, would make ships suddenly lose their buoyancy and sink.

Plus, hot rocks can shoot out of the water like missiles and endanger other ships in the region.  It could also cause a tsunami depending on the strength of the eruption.

The volcano has erupted a dozen times since being discovered in 1939.  The last major eruption was in 2001.  The volcano is blamed for Grenada’s worst maritime disaster when 60 people died after a ship went right into the ocean over the volcano.

The volcano has been causing hundreds of small earthquakes over the last few weeks.  At one point on Thursday, over 150 quakes were recorded in four-hour period around the volcano.

Scientists Say Odds Good Seattle Will Be Destroyed By Earthquake

A group of scientists say that a long overdue earthquake for the Pacific Northwest will strike in the next 50 years and will completely wipe out the city of Seattle.

A new report in the New Yorker highlights the problems of the Cascadia subduction zone which runs for 700 miles off the coast of the Pacific Northwest from Cape Mendocino, California through Vancouver Island.  The zone is named after the Cascade Range of volcanic mountains that runs much of the same course about 100 miles inland.

The amount of time between quakes averages 243 years and because the last major quake took place in 1700, the fault is 72 years past the average date for a major quake.

Katheryn Schulz of the New Yorker spoke with Kenneth Murphy who oversees FEMA’s Region X which encompasses Alaska, Idaho, Oregon and Washington.  He said that when the “big one” hits…either a partial giving way of the southern part of the zone resulting in an 8.0-8.6 quake or a full-margin rupture between 8.7 and 9.2…there will no longer be a Pacific northwest.

“Our operating assumption is that everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast,” Murphy told the New Yorker.  FEMA estimates say that 13,000 people will die in the quake and resulting tsunami.  At least 27,000 will suffer some kind of major injury.

Cities that are west of Interstate 5 include Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, Eugene and the capitals of Oregon (Salem) and Washington (Olympia).

“This is one time that I’m hoping all the science is wrong, and it won’t happen for another thousand years,” Murphy says.

Chris Goldfinger, a paleoseismologist at Oregon State University and one of the world’s leading experts, says that the chance of the “big one” taking place in the next 50 years is 1 in 3.

China Struck By 6.5 Magnitude Quake

At least four people are dead and the toll is expected to rise after a 6.5-magnitude earthquake struck the Xinjang region of China.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said the quake took place in one of the “most seismically hazardous regions on Earth” and centered the quake 59 miles southeast of Yilkiqi, China.

“If many people are gathered in one place during an earthquake, it can lead to a serious disaster, but in this case, there were relatively few people so it isn’t so serious,” China Earthquake Networks Center researcher Sun Shihong told state broadcaster China Central Television.

Dozens are reported injured by multiple sources and the government reported thousands of homes and buildings in the region were damaged or destroyed.

The Ministry of Civil Affairs put the number of damaged homes alone at 3,000.

Over 1,000 tents are being sent into the region to provide temporary shelter for families who have lost their homes.

Canada Day Earthquake Shakes Nova Scotia

Canadian officials confirmed a magnitude 3.6 earthquake rattled Nova Scotia on the country’s independence day.

Natural Resources Canada (NRC) reported that the quake struck about 37 miles west-southwest of the town of Digby in the Gulf of Maine.

Residents say the quake lasted around 10 seconds.  Helen Teed, who lives near the epicenter, told the Canadian Broadcasting Company.

“It’s an old house, and we felt the walls crackling a little bit,” Teed said. “It wasn’t shaking things off my wall, but it made the house crack. Creaking, crack, I don’t know, I’ve never experienced this before so I don’t know how to explain it.”

Mike Springer was on the golf course when it struck and looked at his watch to see it was 3:33 p.m. when the quake struck.

“Holy mackerel,” he said. “I didn’t think we had earthquakes in Nova Scotia.”

The NRC reported no damage from the quake.

Scientists Puzzled By Michigan Earthquake

Scientists are trying to explain a 3.3 magnitude earthquake that struck 13 miles southeast of Battle Creek, Michigan Wednesday.

The quake was recorded 20 miles from the epicenter of a 4.2 magnitude earthquake that struck on May 2nd, the strongest recorded in Michigan in 67 years.

The Wednesday quake was far enough apart from May’s quake that scientists say it’s not an aftershock of the first.  Apparently there are two separate fault lines in the region. The first quake revealed a fault line that had only been previously speculated by scientists but had not been proven.

“After the May event, I suspected we wouldn’t see another event, so I was a bit surprised by this one,” said Harley Benz, a seismologist with U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). “What more surprised me is that they weren’t in the same locations.”

John Yellich of the Michigan Geological Survey concurred the two quakes were not connected.

“Two separate ones today. That’s what it looks like,” Yellich said. “Nothing unusual and the fact that we are getting two of them in the same area, it could be that it’s all of this movement just readjusting. It appears to be two different areas.”

Benz said the quakes could be “glacial rebound”, a conditions where land masses pressed down by tons of ice during Michigan’s last glacial period are starting to rise.

While some environmentalists were quick to related the quakes to the process known as “fracking”, Benz said that evidence shows the quakes are tectonic, or related to the natural movements of the earth’s crust.