I slept right through it. How strong was it in Lafayette?
i just found out the 1987 one was less magnitude. about a 5. they did just downgrade this one from 5.4 to 5.2.
i was a newspaper reporter when the 1987 quake hit. it was a big deal and we did a lot of coverage on it.
that was when i learned about just how potentially deadly the new madrid fault zone really is. should it ever cut loose, it would make the san andreas fault’s worst quake look like a ping pong ball match.
as a golden colorado seismologist graphically explained it to me, ‘an earthquake our where you are, sitting on all that alluvial deposit (soil) it’s like slapping the side of a bowl full of jelly. there’s nothing to stop the shock waves like the broken-up rock underneath california.’ :eek:
I remember the '87 quake. This morning though not so much. At about the time the ground was supposed to be shaking I was hopping around, pulling my pants up, searching for my shoes and running out the door to keep from being late for work. If the earth shook I didn’t notice.
N8 - Whiteland, IN
It woke me up in Cincinnati, but the missus slept through it. At first, I thought, “Crap, the house is collapsing!” When it stopped, I went downstairs and turned on the TV. That was kind of disconcerting.
At the bottom of the page, there’s a link to a map comparing the 1812 New Madrid earthquake to a similarly strong 1994 CA earthquake.
Same here. My coworkers are all talking about how it woke them up but I didn’t feel a thing.
Woke me up in Chicago. It was pretty gentle, but apparently enough to wake me. At first I thought it might be a train (the El tracks run right behind our building), but then I realized I couldn’t hear a train.
Strange, I didn’t wake, but it entered my dreams. I found myself dreaming about an earthquake in southern illinois. I live in Springfield Missouri, so that’s about as far west as it was felt. It’s possible the news was on and that’s how it got into my dreams. It’s also possible that my mind has powers and actually caused the earthquake while I was sleeping.
Just imagine my suprise to hear on the news that there actually was an earthquake in southern illinois an hour later.
I slept right through it. Then again, I was up half the night with a feverish 2 year old. I remember the '87 one. I was riding my bike when it happened and could not figure out why my bike was trying to fall over!
I’m in Indianapolis.
Slept through it here in the land of Moses Cleaveland. Dogs didn’t bark, but they rarely do.
Strangely, just yesterday I was reminiscing about that Iben Browning guy who went around trying to predict earthquakes in the late 80s. Growing up in Missouri, I remember the constant talk about him in 1990 when he predicted (or at least was reported to have predicted*) that the New Madrid fault was going to blow on a certain date. I don’t know why he popped into my head yesterday.
(* ISTR that he never specifically predicted that New Madrid would go on that date, only that there would be an earthquake “somewhere” on that date. A high school buddy of mine countered, “There’s an earthquake somewhere like every 30 seconds.” Anyway, unless my memory is worse than I thought, I always had the feeling that he got a worse ride than his general stupidity merited when New Madrid didn’t blow that day.)
yeppers, that’s the one. if anything like that ever happens again - and chances are it will - the resulting damage here in the mid of west will be incalcuable. anything strong enough to make the mississippi river run backwards for two days has a tendency to capture my attention anyway.
the structures here aren’t earthquake resistant. not even close. i do carry quake insurance. i live in row housing in a condominium complex on the far north side of indianapolis. i wonder how much good it would have done me had today’s shake been an 8??
what has mildly amused me this morning while watching all the various newsie reports is all the local folks going, ‘earthquake??? in indiana???’ apparently a lot of hoosiers have NO IDEA what they’re living near!
I was already up, and at first I thought it was wind but there was no wind, and it wasn’t the shivering shake the building does in strong winds but more of a slow swaying. The husband woke up. The three birds woke up screaming and flailing in their cages but calmed down as soon as we got a light on and made reassuring noises at them. They flittered around with really big, scared eyes for 10-15 minutes then settled down and went back to sleep, as did the husband and, eventually, me.
No damage here, in Gary, Indiana.
I don’t think there’s any damage, but we felt it pretty strongly here in Crawfordsville, IN. It was pretty rare to find somebody this morning who slept through it.
I live near Owensboro, KY. It woke me up. My first thought was “what hit the house?”. I said “what was that?” and my wife calmly answered “earthquake”. My 12-year old son comes into the room, says “we are having an earthquake”. When it stops after a few seconds he says “what do we do now?”. I sensed disappointment when we said “go back to bed, it’s over.” The 8-year-old and the 2-year-old slept through it.
I’m about 40 miles SW of Chicago and didn’t feel a thing. I think the cats did though, one of the boys that’s normally very quiet went on a screaming jag through the house right before my alarm went off, and that’s about the right time.
Slept through it (went to bed very late), but Mr. Brown reports that the pup gave the “Intruder Alert” at about 5:30am. He only barks when he hears strange, unexpected noises, like someone knocking at the door, mailman getting into mailbox, or bird-in-the-gutters type of scratching.
Yep, it’s why the one that hit Mexico City was so devastating and why the Marina District of SF, built on fill from the '06 quake, suffered more than proximal areas.
So for the New Madrid, you’ve got the failed arm of a triple junction overlain by a tremendous amout of Mississippi alluvium and near what’s now become a huge population center (t’wernt so back in 1812).
Talk about your potential Perfect Storm.
It woke me up. When I first awoke “Is that an earthquake?” popped into my head as my bed shook side to side. I dismissed the idea because I have pretty vivid dreams, and we’ve never had an earthquake here since I’ve been alive and coherent, but soon after mom opened a cabinet in the kitchen and a glass fell out and broke.
But yeah that was totally weird. Would say it was kinda cool but I haven’t read reports yet, if there was damage or injuries (besides our glass) then it’s not cool.
This one had a different feeling to me – more of a steady vibration than a full-fledged shake.
It wasn’t so much being awakened by the earthquake that bothered the missus and me, it was laying there, not being able to sleep because we were waiting for the aftershock.