5.3 magntiude earthquake strikes off the coast of Oregon

January 31, 2013 – OREGON - A magnitude 5.3 earthquake struck about 170 miles off the southern Oregon coast. The National Weather Service’s West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center said there was no danger of a tsunami from the Tuesday evening quake. There were no immediate reports of damage. The U.S. Geological Survey’s National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo., said the 7:14 p.m. PST quake occurred at a depth of 6.4 miles. By 10 p.m., the center’s website had logged four reports from people who said they felt a weak shaking from the quake. In the last 12 months, the number of quakes erupting off the coast of Oregon has been moderately increasing. –The Extinction Protocol

Quakes continue to plague East Texas: A 3.9-magnitude earthquake occurred on May 10, and on May 17, there was a 4.8-magnitude earthquake, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Those were followed by a 2.7-magnitude on May 20; a 2.5-magnitude on May 26; a 2.1-magnitude on June 16; a 2.8-magnitude on Dec. 7; a 2.6-magnitude on Dec. 22; and Friday’s earthquake. The most recent earthquake — a 2.8-magnitude — occurred about 6:30 a.m. Tuesday. Timpson court clerk Paula Mullins said Tuesday’s earthquake wasn’t as bad as Friday’s. It just kind of felt like a sonic boom,” she recalled. She said residents discuss earthquakes when they come, and everybody wonders why.  “Everybody’s got their own idea of fracking or God giving us a wake-up call,” she said. “It’s just happening, and we don’t know (why).” Cliff Frohlich, associate director at The University of Texas at Austin Institute for Geophysics, said Tuesday there is a fault system in East Texas called the Mount Enterprise fault system, which has been known for a long time. He said faults there can get reactivated by stresses of various kinds, and some people say the fault system may be related to a 1981 Center earthquake and an 1891 Rusk earthquake. Frohlich said there’s been a lot of interest in human causes of Texas earthquakes in relation to the injection of fluids into the ground. He said there are wells near where Timpson earthquakes were the strongest, and it’s possible that the injection of disposable fluids played a role. Sometimes when you inject fluids you get earthquakes, (and) in Texas there are (numerous) disposable wells,” he said. Frohlich noted that faults are also everywhere, and some might be as small as a football field or garage. He said there is friction to help prevent faults from slipping, but if fluids are pumped in, it can become “like an air hockey table. If mankind is causing them, it’s triggering faults that were stuck…,” he said. “If conditions are right for a fault to move, it moves.” –Tyler Paper