Posted By: anarchtype <Send E-Mail>
Date: Thursday, 3 August 2006, 10:26 p.m.
MENTOR, Ohio (AP) -- A corner of suburban Cleveland has become the
earthquake capital of Ohio, shaking on average every two weeks since
New
Year's Day and making people wonder: What's next?
The quakes haven't caused any serious problems and sometimes even go
unnoticed. Experts aren't sure why they are happening, but they do know
they
are happening frequently: Twelve were recorded in the area by July 1.
"I heard one," said Jim Farrell, 79, of Mentor, a retired plasterer
with an
eye for wall damage. Still, he hasn't seen any damage and hasn't felt
any of
the quakes recorded in Lake County and under adjacent Lake Erie.
The earthquakes have been small, measuring from magnitude 2.0 to 3.8.
In
comparison, the 1994 quake that hit the Northridge area of Los Angeles,
California, was a 6.7 magnitude.
Though they are occurring often now, earthquakes aren't uncommon in the
region. Lake County has been the site for 14 of the 20 earthquakes
recorded
in the state in the past two years. The quakes result from a fault, or
crack, that is under pressure, one of a number of faults in Ohio, most
of
which are under the sedimentary bedrock.
Ground zero for keeping track of the Lake County earthquakes is a busy
classroom building on the Lakeland Community College campus, where a
seismic
monitor sits on the concrete floor of a tiny closet housing electric
boxes.
The monitor is sensitive enough to pick up the rumblings of a heavy
truck
along nearby Interstate 90, according to David Pierce, an assistant
geology
professor who keeps tabs on readings forwarded to the statewide Ohio
Seismic
Network near Columbus.
To Pierce, a low-level earthquake "always feels like a semi
[tractor-trailer] coming down my street and hits a rock or a speed
bump,"
sending a boom like a burst of compressed air.
Pierce, like police and fire departments, can get dozens of calls when
an
earthquake strikes, often from people happy to learn that it didn't do
damage and wasn't a terror attack.
Without damage or injury from the series of quakes, the question for
many
is: Will the next one be worse?
"The official take is: We don't know," Pierce said.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/08/02/ohio.quakes.ap/index.html?section=cnn_latest
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