Research still points to New Madrid quakes

I believe many Midwestern newspaper editors blindly trusted the Associated Press and got taken by a recent AP story that said scientists are beginning to doubt that the New Madrid fault caused several large earthquakes in 1811-1812.

The Southeast Missourian and even the prestigious Chicago Tribune carried the story verbatim. I can see a harried AP editor trying to simplify the lead, to help readers understand the complexities. But the rewrite bent the facts way too far. The lead said:

"New research by U.S. Geological Survey scientists is casting doubt on the long-held idea that the New Madrid fault zone in Missouri's Bootheel unleashed a series of devastating earthquakes in 1811 and 1812."

A quick refresher: All was calm and the sliver of moon was bright after 2 a.m. Dec. 16, 1811, when the earth suddenly shook violently west of Blytheville, Ark. Big Lake was formed. Find it on a map west of Blytheville. Most of Southeast Missouri south of the Diversion Channel drains into it.

Two more big quakes hit on the same morning, one near Steele, Mo., and the other near Caruthersville, Mo. The town of Little Prairie was washed away. Some 100 Little Prairie residents found themselves waist deep in water as the land began to sink. Crevasses opened and closed, slapping water above the treetops. The smell of subterranean roaring, sulfur and coal dust surely made them think hell was opening up. You can find its spot by looking midway across the Mississippi River from the big grain elevator at Caruthersville. The residents carried their youngsters and belongings eight miles on their shoulders to higher ground near the present Hayti, Mo. This information comes from "The Earthquake That Never Went Away" by David Stewart.

Here's where we stray from the Bootheel. The second big quake came Jan. 23, 1812. It was placed somewhere near Caruthersville, but its center was not well-defined. Way up near Carmi, Ill., 130 air miles from New Madrid, Mo., about the same time a two-mile crack in the prairie shot wagon loads of pure white sand to the surface and raised the northern slope of the uplift by six feet. "You could not see the bottom" of the crack, according to then youngster Yearby Land. There's some expert speculation that this was the epicenter of the second big quake.

The third major quake, in February, crossed the crooks of the river at least three times, throwing dams, holes and waterfalls as much as 30 feet high across the Mississippi. The quake was probably centered within sight of the big smokestacks at Marston, Mo. Several boats had just made it to the crooks in the river the day before because of melting ice upstream. Again, in early morning hours, the boatmen's peaceful sleep was broken by the boats' suddenly going upstream "at the speed of a fast horse" while trees were falling into the river. The air smelled of coal dust and sulfur, with a horrendous underground thunder. The current gradually reversed its flow in several hours. One of the new waterfalls was within earshot of New Madrid, and its residents could hear unsuspecting flatboat riders yell for help for a couple of days.

An engineer in Louisville, Ky., kept careful count of the shakes' number and intensity, and counted almost 2,000 of them before they subsided the following spring.

http://showme.net/~fkeller/quake/strength.htm#shakes

There is pressure from community development, industrial and tourism folks asking, "Are we sure we need to build expensive quake-resistance into our buildings? In 1991, Memphis, Tenn., city and county governments cooperated in building a big pyramid for tourism, sports and meeting events. It is taller than the Statue of Liberty and the size of six football fields. Then they realized it was built on a sandbar, and sand turns to jelly when earthquake pressure forces in water and it loses its friction. Some 20,000 sporting event spectators could wash down the river in a sudden quake. So the pyramid sits largely unused lately.

Some university professors have been claiming for a decade that the New Madrid Fault is dying and perhaps was a rebound from global pressure of the glaciers. They've tried to measure in millimeters per year, how much the fault is moving. The measurement is important when two plates meet, as in California's faults. But New Madrid is in the middle of a tectonic plate, and scientists are not sure those measurements mean anything here.

http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/11630.aspx

The concern of seismologists Douglas Wiens and Michael Wysession at Washington University in St. Louis is that the New Madrid Fault may have seen its day and the Wabash Fault is the new kid on the block. They publicly made the statement two years ago. And they do not work for the USGS.

A new fault near Marianna, Ark., southwest of Memphis in line with the New Madrid Seismic Zone but not a part of it, has been discovered. The soil in the cotton fields is white with its sand. Evidence is that it erupted with about a magnitude 7.0 some 5,000 years ago "and may do so again" according to a Little Rock seismologist.

Another fault, the Porter's Gap, or Meeman-Shelby Fault, which runs along the bluffs for 30 miles just northwest of Memphis, gave a strong shake 2,000 years ago. A seismologist at the University of Memphis warns these kinds of faults can lay dormant for a few thousand years, then suddenly come to life again.

The head of the Center for Earthquake Research and Information at Memphis says, "Saying that earthquakes will suddenly stop in an area that has had numerous large earthquakes in the past is an extraordinary claim. Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. We simply do not have the deep understanding necessary to make a prediction like this."

Here's some more comforting news. Susan Hough, with the USGS, has re-looked at old news accounts of the 1811-1812 quakes and concludes they are more on the magnitude of 7.0 instead of high sevens or even eights. And maybe it only rang the church bells in Charleston, S.C., instead of the Charlestown suburb of Boston. The Boston newspapers of that era never mentioned the quake ringing church bells, although low-lying areas of the Carolinas and Georgia reported residents feeling like they were adrift on rough oceans during the quakes.

A magnitude 7.0 quake would still be enough to shake most of North America, but it could leave a few more roads and bridges intact. Every two-tenths drop in magnitude cuts the intensity in half.

And the folks at the CERI still say we're overdue for a 100-year, magnitude 6.0 quake like the one in 1895 north of Charleston, Mo.

I began a website after the 1990 Iben Browning hubbub over whether the moon's pull would disrupt the New Madrid fault, and I have continued on my own to keep it current with fair, accurate, documented information. When Hurricane Katrina hit, it was getting 35 visitors a day. Rush Limbaugh said, "There's this thing in Missouri that will make Katrina look like a Sunday school picnic," and the numbers leapt. Now it gets 200 to 400 visitors a day, occasionally into the thousands. It can be found at www.newmadridfault.info or by searching "new madrid fault intro."

Fred Keller is a Cape Girardeau resident.