Is this an earthquake?? Minnesota never gets earthquakes!!

[SmileyBoy]

WEIRD Story Here:

http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/4080154.html


Homes, businesses evacuated after land sinks in Crookston
Chuck Haga, Star Tribune

Published September 5, 2003

Crookston Mayor Don Osborne declared a state of emergency Friday in this small northwest Minnesota town after a fault line several feet deep and two to three blocks long continued to grow.

The fault line, just north of downtown, forced the evacuation of several homes and the Country Club Motel, which nearly 60 years ago lost several riverbank cabins to a similar geological event.

Officials cut electricity and natural gas lines to six to eight homes whose foundations were affected by the sinking ground. Police and fire crews set up emergency operations, and Minnesota Department of Transportation engineers watched for threats to Hwy. 2, which runs through the city. Trucks were routed around the sinkhole area.

(More....)

[dflprincess]

1. Actually there was an earthquake

up around Moorhead - maybe 10 years ago. My friend's daughter was at school there at the time.

[Breezy du Nord]

2. Sweet!

How come that never happens to me???!!!

[blm]

3. Here's an alert for you.

After the Northridge quake in 94, the insurance agent who handled our claim mentioned that she had recently been at an agent's training school for earthquake disasters. She said they were told to expect a BIG earthquake centered in Missouri and effecting a large part of the midwest.

[GOPisEvil]

4. The New Madrid fault is overdue for a big one!

:scared:

The last time they had a big one, the Mississippi River actually flowed backward for a time.

:scared:

[liberalpress]

10. And created Reelfoot lake!

[JackSwift]

5. Earthquakes happen everywhere

New Madrid, Missouri in 1811 and 12 had three huge ones, which rang church bells in Boston Mass. The Mississippi River ran backwards for 3 days, etc.

So you are in danger from earthquakes anywhere. Safest place on earth during a quake? California due to the building codes.

[Melsky]

6. That's true

The New Madrid earthquakes are the largest in the US in recorded history. I think California has more frequent ones that let some of the stress off. The Midwest will have a large earthquake that no one is prepared for.

It's kind of ironic considering how much some people in the Midwest love to talk about how natural disasters are God's punishment to California for their lifestyle.

I would recommend to people in the Midwest that they look into retrofitting their houses for earthquakes. Unreinforced masonry is particularly dangerous.

I hope that the experts are wrong and there wont be any big earthquakes.

[starroute]

7. Actually only the largest in the lower 48

The four most powerful quakes in US history have all been in Alaska, as were another six out of the top 15.

#5, #8, and #15 were in New Madrid in 1811-12.

#10 was in California in 1857 and #11 in Hawaii in 1868.

The San Francisco quake of 1906 only comes in at #17.

http://wwwneic.cr.usgs.gov/neis/eqlists/10maps_usa.html


But the amazing thing about the New Madrid quakes is how they were felt all over the eastern US. That's because the plate here vibrates as a single unit, while in the west the many fault lines damp out earth movements before they get very far from the epicenter.


On edit: An even bigger one would be the superquake of 1700 in the Pacific Northwest -- but there were no European settlers there at the time, so we only know about it through a combination of Native American legends and Japanese tsunami records.

[Rabrrrrrr]

8. good research -

I was gonna offer the same. Also, when I was growing up in WI, we had occasional earthquakes. Alas, they always happened during the night, and never woke me up, so I never experienced them.

We had one here in NYC a couple years ago, also happening in the night (and that was apparently a really small one; not even picture frame moving quality).

Earthquakes everywhere.

If the Missouri one had happened more recently, we'd be talking about it a lot more, but at the time, few people in the area and no big buildings or anything - it was all frontier - so though it was hella bigger than the SF one, there was nowhere near the same destruction of buildings and people and fires.

Just like the Chicago fire - there was an even bigger one in Wisconsin at the same time, but the WI one wasn't burning down a huge city, so one never hears about it.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

9. The Advanced National Seismic System reports...

2 low magnitude (1.6 and 2.2) earthquakes on September 5th, near Howardville, MO.

Check out this site...It's fascinating!
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/recenteqs/