Posted by Wendi (Flower Child) on April 8, 2008, 11:37 am, in reply to "Re: Texas Earthquakes 1993 and 1995"
Yes, the El Dorado situation has the media vultures out looking for blood in full force. Interesting that they are actually even semi-pretending to pay attention, though 
Here's the whole article, from the Houston Chronicle... just in case they decide to edit it later on.
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Date: Tue, 08 Apr 2008 06:21:47 -0700 (PDT)
To: texaschristian@gmail.com
From: wtaylor@bdsda.com Add to Address BookAdd to Address Book Add Mobile Alert
Subject: wtaylor@bdsda.com has sent you an article from HoustonChronicle.com
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/5682532.html
Tiny temblor near San Antonio a big deal in Texas
By ERIC BERGER
Everything's bigger in Texas — except earthquakes.
At a magnitude of 3.7 on the Richter scale, a quake Monday near San
Antonio was a relative wimp. Some 130,000 similar earthquakes occur
around the world every year. But it's the largest event in Texas in
more than a decade and made headlines around the country.
As Texas lies far from the boundaries of tectonic plates — West Texas
is closest to active faults and can get real temblors — seismologists
say Monday's quake probably occurred because of oil and gas extraction.
"That would be my first guess," said Cliff Frohlich, a seismologist at
the University of Texas at Austin, and the state's foremost expert on
earthquakes.
The region southeast of San Antonio, which is near some oil fields, has
seen several earthquakes during the past 25 years, ranging from 2.6 to
4.3 on the Richter scale, said Angel Gutierrez, a geophysicist with the
U.S. Geological Survey.
"This kind of event is rare, but not unheard of," he said.
Texas has had about 100 earthquakes during the past century that could
be felt, seismologists say. Several million occur in the world each
year.
The state's two most notable quakes occurred in West Texas.
The first came in 1931, near Valentine, where a magnitude 5.8 event
toppled brick chimneys, severely damaged the town's schoolhouse, and
was felt as far away as Mexico, New Mexico and Oklahoma. None of the
town's 25 citizens were harmed.
The state's second-biggest quake came in 1995, near Alpine, when a
5.7-magnitude temblor, in the words of one volunteer firefighter, "set
off every burglar alarm in town."
A 3.7-magnitude earthquake is equivalent to about 15 tons of TNT. The
two largest temblors in Texas were about 1,000 times more powerful.
In contrast to these events, the most powerful earthquakes in the world
are equivalent to about 475 million tons of TNT, or 25,000 nuclear
bombs. Since 1900 there have been four of these earthquakes, each with
a magnitude above 9.0, including the event that precipitated the 2004
tsunami.
People in West Texas and the Panhandle can expect an earthquake
approaching a magnitude of 6.0 about every 50 years, Frohlich said.
Residents of northeastern Texas could feel the effects of larger quakes
along the New Madrid fault line, in southern Missouri. And as evidenced
by Monday's quake, residents of south-central Texas may experience
small earthquakes from time to time, largely because of oil and gas
extraction.
The removal of oil and gas produces small earthquakes in a couple of
ways: The removal of oil creates voids and can cause collapses, and the
injection of water to push out oil can allow cracks or faults in rock
to slip. It's not something the public should be too concerned about,
Frohlich said, as the largest such earthquakes have a relatively modest
4.5 magnitude.
Outside of the above areas in Texas, he said, earthquakes are
exceedingly rare, with much of Texas having among the lowest odds of
earthquakes in the country.
That includes the Houston area, which has just a single, 3.8-magnitude
temblor on record. The year was 1910. It was Sunday.
"In Hempstead several persons stated that windows in their homes
rattled so loudly they could be heard in other rooms. A large
congregation at the Baptist church in Hempstead also felt the shock,"
Frohlich writes in his book, Texas Earthquakes, of the Houston quake.
It is, perhaps, not a shock that no injuries were reported.
One of Frohlich's favorite earthquakes occurred in April 1993, a
4.3-magnitude event near Fashing in the same region where Monday's
struck.
At the time, the Branch Davidians were under siege near Waco, and the
sect's leader had warned of an earthquake in Waco and the presence of
four angels "ready to punish foolish mankind."
After they heard of the quake, "they thought the world was coming to an
end," Frohlich said. "I guess for them, it did."
eric.berger@chron.com
Brought to you by the HoustonChronicle.com
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