Kansas' 4.8-magnitude earthquake, felt in Omaha area, likely to spur debate about energy extraction
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http://www.omaha.com/news/metro/kansas--magnitude-earthquake-felt-in-omaha-area-likely-to/article_4b96a2cf-2788-58ec-b024-c6c982a55cbe.html
POSTED: WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2014 7:15 PM
By Nancy Gaarder / World-Herald staff writer
A southern Kansas earthquake felt as far north as Omaha is likely to add to the debate about the relationship between earthquakes and energy extraction.
Wednesday’s quake, with a magnitude of 4.8, was the strongest of the hundreds to have occurred in the Oklahoma area in the last 11 months, said Dale Grant, a geophysicist with the USGS. Oklahoma has seen a sharp jump in earthquakes with the explosive growth in well drilling commonly referred to as fracking. Kansas, too, has seen a jump. The location of this quake was just north of the Oklahoma-Kansas border.
“Oklahoma has become the new California,” Grant said. “We’ve recorded more magnitude 3 and greater earthquakes in Oklahoma in the last couple of years than we have in California, which is unprecedented.”
The earthquake occurred at 3:40 p.m. and by late afternoon , the USGS had received more than 4,500 reports across 11 states by people who had felt it. Among those were more than three-dozen reports from people in Omaha, Bellevue, Lincoln and Peru, Nebraska, and Council Bluffs and Glenwood, Iowa. The USGS encourages citizen reports via a “Did You Feel It?” website.
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