It seems that there was a small earthquake just north of here on Thursday. KPEL reports:
The quake was detected near Hall Summit, Louisiana, which is located in Red River Parish. According to the USGS, the earthquake measured at magnitude of 2.8 and a depth of 5 km. The earthquake's radius was roughly 250 km.
That is interesting. Louisiana is not known for being in an earthquake zone.
And, yeah, I'm aware of the New Madrid fault and the earthquakes that happened there in the 1700s.
Out of curiousity, how much damage would a mid-sized earthquake (4-5 on the Richter scale) do in Louisiana?
ReplyDeleteHere in California, anything less than a 6 isn't usually a big problem - our local building codes require earthquake mitigation measures on new construction, and most older construction that's still around has had it retrofitted (housing frames bolted to foundations, water heaters and tall bookcases strapped supports, etc) - even a high-5s quake usually doesn't do more than minor damage.
But the times I've been in the South or East Coast, even small quakes seem to be treated as big news, with considerable reported damage.
So is this a matter of "unexpected, hence scary" or a real lack-of-preparedness issue because they are so infrequent? I'll freely admit that most California homes wouldn't do well in a hurricane, for instance.
I’m not an expert but my understanding is that it depends how deep the center is and duration. Years ago in Alaska we had a swarm of several high 3’s and low 4’s and they didn’t do much real damage but one rattled a jar of candy off the refrigerator in the house and almost beaned a kid and it rattled the roof on the holding pen for the cows being milked and they took off for the woods through an electric gate and some of them never did get milked that night because they were so scared!
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