Monday, May 24, 2010

A Couple Of Quakes

Earthquakes tend to be rare in this part of the United States. Because of their rareness, I post this about two of them that happened within the last six years.
I came across notes about one of the quakes last week while going through some old journals, and decided to combine it with an older post.

I was asleep in bed on the morning of Friday, April 18, 2008, when I heard the window sills of my apartment rattling. That didn't bother me because they often did that when the wind blew strongly.

But when i felt my bed start to shake, I thought: Hey --this must be an earthquake!

It was.

It hit the Midwest around 5:35 a.m. that day. its epicenter was the town of West Salem, Illinois, which is northwest of Evansville, Indiana. news reports said it had a rating of 5.2 on the Richter scale.

I also felt what i thought was a small aftershock -- much lower in scale -- around 12:30 p.m.

Later, I found out that April 18 was, by coincidence, the 102th anniversary of the infamous San Francisco earthquake. Instruments weren't available then to measure its power, but scientists now believe that it was between 7.8 and 8.3 on the Richter scale.

Between 8 a.m. to 8:05 a.m. on Sept. 12, 2004, there was an earthquake that measured a 3.6 on the Richter scale. The epicenter was about five miles north of Shelbyville, Indiana, a town that's about 30-40 miles south of where I live.

I didn't feel anything because the Richter scale was so low, but shakes were felt on the east side of Indianapolis and Marion County -- especially in the town of Cumberland and the intersection of East 16th Street and Ritter Avenue.

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