Reason to pay attention to Arkansas quake

“The quake, which occurred at 8:33 a.m. and was centered two miles southeast of Guy, was just one of 45 earthquakes reported since Wednesday afternoon. All but three of the earthquakes were recorded within three miles southeast or south-southeast of Guy. Wednesday afternoon’s quake and two quakes on Thursday were reported east-northeast of Guy.

According to Shelia Maxwell with the Faulkner County Office of Emergency Management, the U.S. Geological Survey is looking into the recent earthquake activity in the area.

“We’re having them (earthquakes) in places we’ve never had them before,” Maxwell said. “The USGS is looking into why we’re having them and why there have been so many.””

“Historic Earthquakes

New Madrid Earthquakes 1811-1812

Earthquake Summary

This sequence of three very large earthquakes is usually referred to as the New Madrid earthquakes, after the Missouri town that was the largest settlement on the Mississippi River between St. Louis, Missouri and Natchez, Mississippi. On the basis of the large area of damage (600,000 square kilometers), the widespread area of perceptibility (5,000,000 square kilometers), and the complex physiographic changes that occurred, the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-1812 rank as some of the largest in the United States since its settlement by Europeans. They were by far the largest east of the Rocky Mountains in the U.S. and Canada. The area of strong shaking associated with these shocks is two to three times as large as that of the 1964 Alaska earthquake and 10 times as large as that of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Because there were no seismographs in North America at that time, and very few people in the New Madrid region, the estimated magnitudes of this series of earthquakes vary considerably and depend on modern researchers' interpretations of journals, newspaper reports, and other accounts of the ground shaking and damage. The magnitudes of the three principal earthquakes of 1811-1812 described below are the preferred values taken from research involved with producing the 2008 USGS National Seismic Hazard Map (http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2008/1128/).”