As earthquakes keep rocking North Texas, residents are rattled
November 27, 2013 – TEXAS - On
Tuesday morning, yet another earthquake rocked the small Tarrant County
town of Azle. It was the sixth within a week in Tarrant and Parker
counties. More than a dozen quakes have rattled North Texas in November.
Azle residents are getting nervous and seismologists are trying to get
to the bottom of what’s going on. Some point to natural gas drilling
that’s happening in the Barnett Shale, a massive geological formation
that covers about 20 North Texas counties. But a geophysicist with the
National Earthquake Information Center says more testing is needed to
make such a connection. Donna Luce is worried. “I was sitting there
watching TV, and my house just shook, and I’ve never felt that before,
ever,” she said. “Now, actually, I’m afraid of sinkholes.” Debbie Raub
and her husband, Fred, described the big quake with a 3.6 magnitude as
“real spooky. Real loud boom, and then it just started shaking the
ground under our mobile home,” she said. “Just rocking it. And our dogs,
they go totally insane. They know it before it happens.” Each time
there’s a quake, their two-bedroom trailer has to be re-leveled. “You
just have to get under there, and jack it up in spots, put a level on
underneath the trailer, and level it,” Debbie Raub said. “It’s just
pulling the ground out beneath our stands.”
Fred Raub, who was born in Azle, says
he doesn’t think the quakes are natural. He blames local natural gas
drilling. “They say it ain’t what happens, but till then, we didn’t have
it,” he said. “You gotta drill about every mile. You just start looking
around at all the drills they’re putting down.” Don Blakeman, a
geophysicist with the National Earthquake Information Center, says the
quakes could be the result of oil and gas production. But he says more
testing is needed to know that for sure. ”Obviously, if it is oil and
gas production related, they might continue until that activity stops,”
he said. “The other possibility is that it’s just a natural swarm,
because we do see that sort of thing occurring sometimes in areas where
we haven’t had quakes before.” A natural swarm is a series of small
quakes. And Blakeman says they aren’t as dangerous as quakes with bigger
magnitudes – quakes at 5.0 magnitudes can produce structural damage. In
the meantime, in case the ground starts to shake again, Blakeman
advises individuals and families to be prepared if a bigger quake
strikes North Texas. Scientists and other experts are reportedly
teaming up with the U.S. Geological Survey to collect more data to learn
more about why these quakes keep occurring in North Texas. –KERA
No comments:
Post a Comment