Largest Earthquake Drill in Central U.S. History

The last few days have seen swarms or clusters of earthquakes in Arkansas, ranging from 2.0 to 3.3 in magnitude. Arkansas is one of 8 states that make up the New Madrid Seismic Zone or Fault Line. The other 7 states are Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi.

In the video below, the state of Missouri’s state geologist Joe Gillman is calling on residents of these 8 states to participate in an earthquake drill – the largest earthquake drill in Central U.S. history, at 10:15 am on April 28, 2011

The 150-mile…long fault system, which extends into five states, stretches southward from Cairo, Illinois; through Hayti, Caruthersville and New Madrid in Missouri; through Blytheville into Marked Tree in Arkansas. It also covers a part of West Tennessee, near Reelfoot Lake, extending southeast into Dyersburg. Most of the seismicity is located between 3 and 15 miles…beneath the Earth’s surface.

The zone had four of the largest North American earthquakes in recorded history, with moment magnitudes estimated to be as large as 8.0, all occurring within a three-month period between December 1811 and February 1812…. Based on artifacts found buried by sand blow deposits and from carbon-14 studies, previous large earthquakes like those of 1811-1812 appear to have happened around AD 1450 and around AD 900, as well as approximately AD 300. Evidence has been found for an apparent series of large earthquakes around 2350 BC.

[The earthquakes on February 7, 1812, had magnitudes of 7.4 to 8.6 with their] epicenter near New Madrid, Missouri. New Madrid was destroyed. At St. Louis, Missouri, many houses were severely damaged, and their chimneys were toppled. This shock was definitively attributed to the Reelfoot Fault by Johnston and Schweig. It was uplift along this reverse fault segment, in this event, that created waterfalls on the Mississippi River, disrupted the Mississippi River at Kentucky Bend, created a wave that propagated upstream and caused the formation of Reelfoot Lake. The earthquakes were felt as far away as New York City and Boston, Massachusetts, where ground motion caused church bells to ring….

In a report filed in November 2008, The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency warned that a serious earthquake in the New Madrid Seismic Zone could result in “the highest economic losses due to a natural disaster in the United States,” further predicting “widespread and catastrophic” damage across Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and particularly Tennessee…. The earthquake is expected to also result in many thousands of fatalities, with more than 4,000 of the fatalities expected in Memphis alone…. The USGS [U.S. Geological Society] recently issued a fact sheet reiterating the estimate of a 10% chance of a New Madrid earthquake of magnitude comparable to those of 1811-1812 within the next 50 years, and a greater chance of a magnitude 6.0 earthquake in the same time frame.

Below is a video on the New Madrid Fault Line:

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