| farrermog |
Apr 18th, 2008 06:48 PM |
Good to hear the earth moved for so many of our American friends, without casualties or damage. Here in Australia Reuters reported that the quake was in the Wabash Valley seismic zone, adjacent to the New Madrid fault. The latter is given a sobering mention in Simon Winchester's <i>A Crack in the Edge of the World; the Great American Earthquake of 1906</i>. Winchester also records that the New Madrid/ Wabash nexus is one of four locations in the middle of the North American tectonic plate where earthquakes simply should not happen but do - and that similar examples include the Newcastle, Australia quake of 1989 [11 lives lost and much property damage], which many felt rather spectacularly in Sydney (desks moving in skyscraper offices; in my case a noisy whipcracking sound and a large mirror flapping on the wall of my then Sydney home, which initially led me to think that I'd left a sliding door open and a gale had come up - the door was closed.)
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