Earthquake in Midwest

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[DocCincy]

Earthquake in Midwest....

[NYer]

Running on the Associated Press Wire ....

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) _ An earthquake rattled portions of the Midwest and South on Tuesday, but authorities had no immediate reports of damage.

The quake, which struck at 12:37 p.m. CDT, registered a magnitude of 5.0, said John Bellini with the U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colo., which tracks earthquakes.

The epicenter was 10 miles northwest of Evansville, Ind., he said.

[Pokey78]

Spoke to my brother who works on the 10th floor of an office building in downtown Louisville. He said they felt it pretty good. Building swayed.

[stlnative]

Now Fox News reports it as a 5.0... Centralized in Evansville Indiana.

[Corporate Law]

Where in Cincinnati? I am in a downtown tower and did not feel anything.

[MasonGal]

Wow -we didn't feel a thing here in southern IN!!

We only live 1 1/2 hours east of Evansville - right across the Ohio River from Louisville.

I'll call my parent and in-laws in northern Cincinnati and northern KY to see if they felt anything.

[John H K]

Any other FREEPERS have any feelings, thoughts, dreams about such?

No offense, but with the avaliability of near-real time seismic data on the web, there's developed this weird conglomeration of non-seismologists and non-scientists (I'm not a seismologist or scientist either, myself) who spend a great deal of time looking at these maps of seismicity on the web and making various pronoucements, predictions, guesses, expressions of concern, etc. Typically consisting of people claiming they see activity "moving" from place to place, etc. etc. etc.

This has gone on for years (and I have to admit, it's fairly addicting following such stuff). But pretty much everything stated, guessed at, or forecast through all of this has been completely, totally, utterly, WORTHLESS.

And whatever "successes" may have happened derive from the sheer number of non-qualified people making predictions on the web; for any major quake, through sheer dumb luck, someone, somewhere, will have "predicted" it.

The human mind is so wired for pattern-recognition that it will create a non-existent pattern out of randomness. While obviously when you start talking about shorter distances (several hundred to a thousand or two miles) quakes in one area may affect seismicity in another, there is absolutely no credible evidence that seismicity in one area of the world has any influence, or offers predictive value, for quakes 5,000 or 10,000 miles away.

An additional issue, as I've noted before, is that there is NOTHING that people find more terrifying than randomness; people desperately try to convince themselves that everything happens for a specific reason or a specific known cause; it's more reasurring than randomness.

[curmudgeonII]

I felt it about the time that was mentioned. {I'm about 25 miles NE of Indianapolis.) Thought it might have been a big truck - I'm on a state highway.

[MasonGal]

...make that "call my parentS" -

[Mike-o-Matic]

   And not necessarily a precursor of anything.

Not even a sign that Planet X [Google Search] is rapidly approaching, and beginning to destabilize our planet's core? :-O Gasp!

[Corporate Law]

Ditto. Nothing felt here in downtown.

[w1andsodidwe]

LOL, All is well in Northern California too.

[KC Burke]

I'm just hoping that it isn't the smile portion of a smiley face, as I might be near the diagonally opposite "eye", LOL.

[Cuttnhorse]

I have been to the site of the devestation in Peru which followed the 1970 quake that killed and estimated 70,000 people and destroyed 80% of all the structures in a valley about 150 miles long. Incredible...whole villages buried by huge mud flows. I believe that quake was a 7.0 M.

[stlnative]

I was on another thread when it hit...

To: freedox

The shoes are Polo Brand, but look like running shoes to me. (BTW... I just felt a small earthquake here in Southern Illinois (We are near the Madrid Fault)... It knocked some stuff off a shelf and scared the life out of me. The whole house shook.)

66 posted on 6/18/02 12:49 PM Central by brigette
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I hope there is no more today or for awhile!

[DocCincy]

I'm actually out in the Loveland area, off of Wards Corner Road near I-275. Most of my colleagues felt it. It was sort of a rolling sensation, and the computer monitor rocked for a moment. The walls and windows creaked a bit too, but then again they do that in a good stiff gust of wind.

[Black Cat]

My wife called to report a minor rumble in Indianapolis. She works on an upper floor and it rattled some trinkets in her office but a co-worker who was on the street at the time felt nothing.

[Right Wing Professor]

Nothing here in Lincoln, NE either. We're quite a distance away, but I was sitting in a high-rise at 12:40, and would have felt anything significant.

[gracie1]

Damn. A 5.0 is a lot more potentially dangerous than people think, outside of areas with hardcore earthquake-proof-building regulations like SF and LA. In Manhattan, a 5.0 could cause some very serious damage and a lot of deaths because so many of the buildings are unreinforced brick masonry. The skyscrapers would be okay, but your brownstone wouldn't be very pleasant afterwards.

That is so true. I'm a born and bred Kalifornian and quakes under 6.0 don't bother me in the least because of the geology of the ground and placement of the faults here. 5.0's hit quite frequently in the Mammoth Lakes area of the Sierra Nevada and shake us pretty good here, but little damage occurs. Also because of the building codes, most of your newer buildings suffer very little damage, even in large quakes. Remember Loma Prieta? Except for the Nimitz Frwy, the most damage was to older buildings, especialy on unstable landfill.

Abount 14 years ago I went to Cinninati and was in an antique store in Covington when a large truck rumbled by. The whole building shook violently and scared the wits out of this Kalifornia girl! It was an unreinforced brick 3 story home at least 100 years old.

[windchime]

The date was December 3, 1990.

[Cuttnhorse]

This has gone on for years (and I have to admit, it's fairly addicting following such stuff). But pretty much everything stated, guessed at, or forecast through all of this has been completely, totally, utterly, WORTHLESS.

I like the one where dogs are supposed to go nuts right before a quake...folks who believe this one should see my pooches sleep right through the darn things.

We had a 6.5 mag quake down here in Chile this morning...was a good one; the EC about 60 miles from where I am.