Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Earthquakes Rock Oklahoma

Over the past couple of years, earthquake frequency and strength have risen in Oklahoma, a state most wouldn't equate with such tectonic activity. In fact, 2010/11 has been the most active so far, and just days ago the Sooner State saw its strongest yet--at nearly 6 points. I've blogged about this increased activity before and postulated whether it could be a precursor to another event along the New Madrid fault, a potentially dangerous scenario for those cities along the Mississippi River. But in Oklahoma, the Meers Fault has been active as well, and one wonders if it isn't becoming something with which Oklahomans will have to deal with in the future. Records of seismic activity in Oklahoma are less than 100 years old, so in a geological sense we're quite ignorant as to what might be "normal" for this region. Is this a new threat emerging or a cyclical activity that will subside with time?  We'll have to wait and see. Check out the Earthquake tag below to read more.

3 comments:

Sharon Day said...

Man, I hope the buildings are ready for that. Not exactly a typical earthquake code location.

Jessica Penot said...

It seems like seismic activity has increased in general over the last several years.

J.Griffin said...

Much of that seismic activity is centered on a very large,very active 24/7/365 4-well salt water disposal site.

This is where tankers line up to dispose of salt water from fracking wells.

If all NEW fracking was banned,
all existing wells would continue to produce massive amounts of waste water.

If the oil is sucked out of a region and all the water is gathered up and disposed of in one spot,
what will happen?

Just like water erosion under a concrete foundation-
CRACK.

Fracking is sloppy drilling-
it does unspeakable damage underground that can't be fixed.

Oklahoma is riddled with such destruction-
the oil companies there have more money and power than any other sector,group or company-
including the city/county/state governments.