A Day the Ozarks Shook, Rattled, and Rolled

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Smaller quakes and rumblings had been occurring in the area of extreme southeastern Missouri and northeastern Arkansas since late in the preceding year, but around 9:00 a.m. local time on January 23, 1812, (212 years ago this morning,) a massive earthquake, subsequently called the "New Madrid Earthquake," rolled onto the scene and shook not only the area around the epicenter in the Missouri Bootheel, but was also felt as far away as the east coast of the United States.  It was the second of three major quakes to hit the area in an eight-week span, and by far the most severe.  Buildings toppled, fissures and cracks in the earth's surface developed, sand was forced up from underground that ruined crop fields for several years, and the Mississippi River developed temporary waterfalls and even flowed backward for a couple of hours.  The tremors continued for weeks.

Because the area where the quake activity was centered was sparsely at that time, there were thought to be only around a hundred people who were killed as a result of the seismic activity, and damage to existing structures was far lighter than it would have been in modern times.

A source which I read this morning said that the quake which happened 212 years ago today measured "nearly eight points on the Richter scale," a "fact" that I found interesting since the quake occurred long before the invention of seismographs which measure ground movement, and eighty-eight years before the birth of Charles Francis Richter, one of the developers of the Richter scale and the person for whom it was ultimately named.  

But, I digress.  Based on the ample anecdotal evidence, it was a really big damned earthquake, and it probably would have measured "nearly eight points on the Richter scale," if not more. 

The New Madrid fault is a 150-mile line of seismic instability that runs from southern Illinois down through the Missouri Bootheel, and into northeastern Arkansas.  It also touches on eastern Tennessee and Kentucky.  In 1990 a climatologist named Iben Browning created quite a stir when he predicted a major reoccurrence of the massive New Madrid earthquake, and he even went so far as to predict the exact dates that the new earthquake would happen:  December 2nd and 3rd, 1990.  Mr. Browning got the survivalists all stirred up, and he was responsible for the sale of many earthquake insurance policies, but his prediction was ultimately wrong - leading some to conclude that super computers abroad the UFOs that constantly hover above Earth had interfered with his calculations.

A recent academic study has postulated that the situation might actually be getting better due to a shift in an anomaly which effects the tectonic plates below New Madrid, and that as a result the plates are growing more stable - or not.

As someone who experienced several small earthquakes while living in Japan, I know this much to be true:  when the earth moves under your feet, it's not always due to love!