Quake offers new scenario for emergency managers

TONY BROWN/DAILY FORUM
Like everyone else in the area, Nodaway County Emergency Management Director Christy Forney was taken by surprise during Saturday’s minor earthquake, since such events are all but unheard of in this part of the country. Forney said the Maryville area’s only earthquake plan calls for the city’s designation as a shelter community for survivors in the event of a major seismic event along the New Madrid Fault in southeast Missouri.

Aside from raising Nodaway County’s collective blood pressure for a few anxious seconds Saturday morning, an earthquake that rattled across the nation’s heartland from southwest Texas to Illinois did little, if any, damage locally.

In fact, after the initial shock, local residents almost immediately started cracking wise on Facebook and other social media platforms. One meme showed a suite of white plastic lawn furniture sitting in a yard with one chair tipped over and a caption that read, “I survived the Maryville earthquake.”

Reported responses by other folks verged on disbelief, since earthquakes are so rare in northwest Missouri — at least until now — that the best words used to describe their frequency might be “never” and “non-existent.”

Nodaway County Emergency Management Director Christy Forney said Tuesday that when she felt the quake at her home she thought at first she was having a dizzy spell. She said a friend told her later about deciding not to mention the quake for fear people would think she was making it up.

Maryville Public Works Director C.E. Goodall said he, too, believed he was feeling lightheaded, but then noticed there were waves rolling across an above-ground children’s swimming pool that shouldn’t have been there.

“That was an earthquake,” Goodall said he told himself before quickly deciding he’d better take a drive around town to check for evidence of broken water lines and other infrastructure damage.

He didn’t find any, and as of Tuesday Goodall said there have been no quake-related reports of leaks, lost water pressure, or backed-up sewers.

Forney said her response was to stay on the alert for any calls that might come in. She said she also replied to a request from the State Emergency Management Agency for confirmation that the quake was felt locally.

She said SEMA passed on her reply, along with those of emergency managers across the region, to the U.S. Geological Survey so that geologists and other experts can assemble an accurate record of the event and its characteristics.

All of Nodaway County was affected by the quake, said Forney, adding that the seconds-long temblor officially began at 7:10 a.m. and measured 2.1 on the seismic magnitude scale.

According to the USGS, quakes with a magnitude of between 2.0 and 2.9 are classed as “minor,” may not be felt by everyone, and usually don’t cause damage to structures. Globally, about 1 million such quakes occur each year.

As it turns out that Nodaway does indeed have an earthquake response plan, though it wouldn’t have done much good had Saturday’s shake-up been strong enough to cause damage or injuries.

Forney said that’s because the plan addresses what would happen if a major quake occurred along southeast Missouri’s famed New Madrid Fault, in which case Maryville would become one of the communities designated to serve as an emergency relocation destination for survivors.

“We do have an earthquake plan for the state of Missouri, but it focuses on the New Madrid Fault,” she said. “We haven’t really talked about what would happen if we have an earthquake here.”

In the wake of this weekend’s events, however, that conversation will now probably take place.

As it happens, a group of area crisis managers, known collectively as the Local Emergency Planning Committee, is scheduled to meet today at the Nodaway County Administration Center. The subject of earthquakes wasn’t on the agenda, but Forney said it probably is now.

“I think we’ll talk about it,” she said.

Saturday’s quake had a recorded magnitude of 5.6 at its epicenter in north-central Oklahoma and has brought fresh attention to the practice of disposing of wastewater — produced by the recovery of oil and natural gas — deep underground.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake was strongest on the fringe of an area where regulators have stepped in to limit wastewater disposal, and that the temblor matched a November 2011 quake in the same region.

According to the Associated Press, the Oklahoma Corporation Commission is requiring 37 wells in a 514 square-mile area around the epicenter to shut down within seven to 10 days. The commission has been asking wastewater-well owners to reduce disposal volumes in parts of the state since 2013.

People in Kansas City and St. Louis; Chicago; Gilbert, Arizona; Fayetteville and Little Rock, Arkansas; Des Moines, Iowa; Memphis, Tennessee; and Big Lake in the southwest part of Texas all reported feeling the quake.

Pawnee County, Oklahoma, Emergency Management Director Mark Randell said no buildings collapsed in the county seat of Pawnee, located about 9 miles southeast of the epicenter, but that cracks appeared in several buildings.

Randell said one man suffered a minor head injury when part of a fireplace fell on him as he protected a child.

The damage is not as severe as the 2011 quake near Prague, Oklahoma, about 60 miles south of Pawnee, despite being the same magnitude and approximately the same depth. Saturday’s was 3.7 miles deep, compared to 3.1 miles in 2011. Both are shallow quakes, during which shaking is more intense, like setting off “a bomb directly under a city,” according to USGS seismologist Susan Hough.