A Seasoned Combatant of Tornadoes Now Finds the Earth Is Moving,Too

Vincent Citro

On Saturday night in Shawnee, Oklahoma, there was a magnitude 5.6 earthquake that severely damaged St. Gregory’s University. Benedictine Hall is the trademark of the school and is where the library is located and most classes are held through out the school day. The quake occurred along the Wilzetta fault, which is located on the west-central part of Oklahoma and has been the epicenter of numerous earthquakes over the past few years. Even though tremors are very common in the area in the past, it is a mystery why the jump in seismic activity took place over such a short period of time. The people of Oklahoma always say that they would much rather have to deal with a tornado as opposed to an earthquake because you can predict and prepare for a tornado while earthquakes are nearly impossible to predict.

This goes directly into the discussion we had in class about the earthquake that took place in Italy. Despite it being a location of constant seismic activity, the fact that scientists were not able to predict it got them on trial. The people that lived in the area were so outraged by the amount of destruction and devastation that the quake caused that they needed somebody to throw the blame on. The local scientists were took the brute of the attack, despite the fact that most of them were not even seismologists.

It also goes into the earthquake activity we did in class where we were able to triangulate the exact location of the epicenter of the earthquake. The people in Oklahoma were able to triangulate based on the aftershocks of the next day and found that the source of the quake came from the Wilzetta fault. Despite them already having a good idea of the location of the quake because of all the past activity it had caused the area, it is never a bad idea to find out for certain what the source of the problem was. Hopefully they can better prepare themselves for the next quake by making buildings more resistant to the shakes and tremors that the earthquake brings to the area.

Source

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/08/us/oklahoma-earthquakes-damage-st-gregorys-university.html?_r=1