The US Geological Survey is reporting a cluster of earthquakes in northern Oklahoma.
The USGS said four earthquakes were recorded around Cherokee and Helena, Oklahoma since late Wednesday. The biggest was a 4.3 magnitude quake centered five miles away from Cherokee at 9:08 a.m. Thursday.
The courthouse in Cherokee reportedly suffered damage as a result of the 4.3 quake.
Amanda Kutz, office manager for the Alfalfa County Sheriff’s Department, said that no one was injured but that plaster is coming off interior walls and that their third floor’s ceiling was damaged.
The USGS says three other quakes between 2.9 and 3.8 have been recorded since Wednesday.
The U.S. Geological Survey reports that Humboldt County California was struck by a 5.7 magnitude earthquake Wednesday afternoon.
The quake’s epicenter was underwater about 40 miles southwest of Eureka.
Lt. Wayne Hanson of the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office told NBC that no major damage or injuries were reported but that the shaking was significant. The USGS “Did You Feel It” website had multiple reports from coastal areas of Level VI shaking, designed as “strong”.
Ironically, the quake struck as a “room full of Public Safety Officials” were meeting at the California Office of Emergency Services.
The USGS reported measurements from the quake over 200 miles to the north, east and south.
Oklahoma is being shaken with a series of earthquakes including two towns that had significant quakes in back to back days.
Medford, OK received the stronger of the quakes. The U.S. Geological Survey says that a 4.2 magnitude quake struck 13 miles southeast of Medford on Tuesday around 10 a.m. The same area received a 4.3 magnitude earthquake on Monday.
The quakes coincide with two quakes in the town of Perry. According to the Oklahoma Geological Survey, a 2.5 magnitude quake hit Perry on Monday followed by a 4.0 magnitude quake around dawn Tuesday morning. (The USGS recorded the quake at 3.8 magnitude.)
An earthquake was also recorded in Helena, OK, at 3.0 magnitude, while a 3.3 magnitude quake was registered near Guthrie.
A positive impact from the quake was that it shook Pleasant Vale Elementary School in Enid, Oklahoma where the students were studying plate tectonics and earthquakes.
Compassion International has released a report showing that five years after the massive 7.0 magnitude earthquake that devastated Haiti they are on track to fulfill promises made during rebuilding.
The Christian ministry is on track to build 30 new school buildings by spring. The schools, built with $31.2 million dollars from sponsors and donors, will help get education back on track.
Compassion even created a construction company with engineers from El Salvador to build the 30 schools. The schools will have the unique feature of being built to withstand strong earthquakes like the 7.0 quake of 2010.
The majority of students in the country receive their education from private church run schools because there is no established public school system in Haiti.
Matthew Moore of Compassion told the Christian Post that the schools were a necessity because without them they could have lost 25,000 children from their programs to improve their lives and prepare them for a better life.
The capital of the Philippines was rocked Saturday by a 6.0 earthquake that struck in the early hours of the morning.
The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said the quake was centered 27 miles southwest of San Antonio, Zambales at 3:31 a.m.
A reporter for the Philippine Daily Inquirer said the quake was so strong it shook him and his son out of bed.
“The bed shook, the speaker fell and dogs barked,” Dennis Eroa wrote. “That was the first time I experienced that kind of quake here in Olongapo.”
Officials reported only minor structural damage throughout the region.
Seismologists say that the residents of the area were lucky that the quake struck so far underneath the sea bed that a tsunami was not created and damage on land would be minimal.
The fans of the New England Patriots celebrating their team’s hosting of the AFC Championship Game this weekend weren’t the only thing causing the ground to shake in New England.
The U.S. Geological Survey reports that a series of five earthquakes rocked eastern Connecticut area on Monday. The strongest quake, magnitude 3.1, was felt in parts of Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
The USGS says that four of the quakes struck in a 20 minute span starting around 6:30 a.m. Eastern Time.
John Ebel, senior research scientists at the Western Observatory told WCVB-TV the quakes are not as unusual as you would think for that area. He stated there is a tectonic plate from the West Coast to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
He said the quakes are caused by pressure being rleleased from those two boundaries.
A swarm of earthquakes has struck in the Dallas area.
Part of the blame is being thrown toward the Dallas Cowboys.
Seismologists have been placing monitoring stations around the site of the old Texas Stadium, the longtime home of the Dallas Cowboys. The stadium was imploded April 2010.
A fault line ran directly underneath the stadium’s location. Seismologists say it’s possible the implosion caused stress energy in the fault to release causing small shifts.
“If you beat on this and shake it, it’s going to have a tendency to slide. Not the big ones [faults], but all the little ones,” Dr. Len Kubicek, a geology professor at nearby North Lake College told CBS. “It can splinter into several faults and one of these little faults, especially where that stadium was, you do an explosion on top of it and beat it up and down — it has a tendency to move.”
Environmentalists say that it’s more likely wastewater injected during fracking is the cause of the quakes. However, Dr. Kubicek and state officials say there are no fracking wells within the city.
Dr. Kubicek says it’s unlikely there will be a huge quake.
“If you get a lot of small earthquakes you’re probably not going to ever get a big one. Because if you have a big earthquake you have to have a lot of stored energy; and if you keep having little ones you can’t store it.”
The U.S. Geological Survey reported a magnitude 3.9 earthquake struck Tuesday off the coast of San Pedro, California.
The tremor struck around 3:26 p.m.
The epicenter was 16 miles from Long Beach and 14 miles from Rancho Palos Verdes. The quake was reportedly shallow at a depth of 2 miles.
Residents of the area said that the quake felt a lot bigger than the USGS report.
“Felt much stronger than a 3.9,” Chris DuRee, who was near downtown Long Beach, told KTLA-TV. “Rattled softly and then a few strong rolls. No damage anywhere.”
No reports of significant damage or injuries according to local officials.
Los Angeles is one earthquake away from losing a major part of their water supply.
The city of Los Angeles gets almost 90 percent of its water from three major aqueducts. These aqueducts run from the Colorado River, Owens Valley and the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
The aqueducts cross the well-known San Andreas Fault a total of 32 times.
This means any major quake along that fault line could end the water supply into the nation’s second largest city.
Mayor Eric Garcetti is calling on city officials to create better plans to protect the city’s water supply.
“[Water is] one of L.A.’s greatest earthquake vulnerabilities,” Garcetti told the L.A. Times. “If it were to take six months to get our water system back … residents and businesses would be forced to relocate for so long that they might never come back.”
Officials are looking to San Francisco’s Public Utilities Commission for a possible solution. The SFPUC recently installed a specially designed pipe over a fault line that has “accordion-like joints” that would allow the pipe to flex and move in any direction should the fault line move.
“We’re the first city that’s really bet its life on outside water,” U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Lucy Jones told the Times. “We have to cross the faults. There’s no way to not go over the fault.”
“There should be a serious dialogue among the agencies that are responsible for the three sources of water to Southern California,” said Thomas O’Rourke, a Cornell University engineering professor. “Sometimes it’s very difficult to go beyond those institutional barriers…. Somebody just has to take it up.”
An earthquake rattled northern Arizona Sunday night.
The U.S. Geological Survey reported the 4.7 magnitude quake centered 7 miles north of Sedona and was 6 miles deep. While no homes reported damage, the highway department had to clear rocks and debris from highways between Sedona and Flagstaf.
“Business as usual,” said David Brumbaugh, director of the Arizona Earthquake Information Center at Northern Arizona University told azfamily.com. “It’s nothing unusual to have earthquakes in this part of the state. Most of them are too small to be felt.”
The USGS reported over 1,200 people said they felt the quake.
“I think what I heard was the house kind of rattling,” said Donna Kearney Lomeo, a Sedona real estate agent, told azfamily. “It sounded like a bunch of balls rolling around on the roof.”
Smaller aftershocks have been felt in the region.
