April 18, 2008 - "Not the Big One"

Don't worry everyone... it's not "The Big One"!

You may have heard on the news that we had an earthquake down here this morning around 4:30am. And yep, it woke us up!!! Don't worry, we're fine and so is our house.

At first we thought that someone was in the house because we heard this loud banging coming from the middle of the house - sort of like someone was intentionally stomping their feet as they were walking down the hall. But we soon realized (after everything started shaking!) that it wasn't someone in the house - it was an earthquake!

It's a strange feeling to be in the middle of something like that - you feel completely confused, anxious, and out of control. We had no idea what was going on because we'd never experienced that kind of thing before. It seemed like everything was happening for a long period of time, bit it was only for about 15-20 seconds and then it was over.

Later this morning around 10:15, we experienced an aftershock, which I am assuming came because of another 4.0 shock near the epicenter on the eastern side of Illinois. It's a very creepy feeling, let me tell you! When you hear things rattle for no apparent reason... yikes! The aftershock was not as noticeable but I heard one of our shelves rattling as I was pouring my tea, which was just plain weird. Noah emailed me saying he had felt it too at work, and my boss's mom called saying she'd felt it too in a different part of town.

The epicenter was near the border of Illinois and Indiana in Bellmont, IL - about 128 miles east of St. Louis. The quake was felt or picked up on seismographs as far north as the UP of Michigan, Madison, Chicago, Kentucky and Tennessee. Indiana and eastern Illinois had some damage, but most people around St. Louis just felt the shaking - no injuries or significant damage here.

I was doing some research on the US Geological Survey website, and there had actually been a small quake, about 1.4 on the scale, on April 13th. Maybe it was leading up to this one? Hmm...

Most people don't know that the Midwest has a significant fault line - the New Madrid Fault. It is actually comparable with the big fault line out west, but we don't experience as much action around here (thankfully!). We have earthquake drills along with tornado drills in schools here, and also have earthquake insurance.

Here are a few links to what happened this morning and about the fault line that caused the quake:

Earthquake History of Missouri: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/states/missouri/history.php

List of Earthquakes that happened today, 4/18:
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsus/Maps/US10/32.42.-95.-85_eqs.php

Photos & News:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24195650/ (FYI... the quake did NOT rattle skyscrapers in Chicago or Cincinnati. Don't you just love the media?)

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080418/NEWS06/80418008

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/nation/story/85FD230AAFCED4D08625742F003769F5?OpenDocument

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/story/254D71E25C1248C78625742F003D49C0?OpenDocument

Here are some photos - the sidewalk photo is NOT from St. Louis. It's from a Japan quake, FYI.
http://iwitness.stltoday.com/mycapture/photos/Album.aspxEventID=498374&CategoryID=21355