New Madrid Earthquake Zone in News Again

 10-15 years ago we posted quite a few times about the New Madrid fault zone.  When we discovered that it was responsible for a massive quake a few hundred years ago and it’s not in California or Alaska…it’s in Tennessee and surrounding states.  According to FEMA if that fault were to produce the same size quakes of 1811-12 today, USA would be brought to a sudden standstill.

We’ve pontificated that if USA were ever to force Israel to divide its land, God could use the New Madrid to divide ours…right up the middle.

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Today, the 23rd earthquake in the last 4 weeks struck in the heart of an area known as the New Madrid Seismic Zone or NMSZ for short. While it was weak, it serves as a reminder of the area’s violent seismic past –and a warning of its potentially violent seismic future.

December 16  marks the anniversary of first of  three very significant earthquakes to strike this same region during the winter of 1811-1812, a violent time in seismological history of the region that scientists say will be repeated again. While  this latest earthquake was relatively inconsequential, authorities are concerned that people aren’t properly prepared for when a big earthquake will strike this region.  The matter of a larger destructive earthquake in this area is more of a matter  of “when” rather than “if.”  These recent earthquakes have been in the heart of the NMSZ where a significant earthquake will likely happen again at some point in the future.

While the US West Coast is well known for its seismic faults and potent quakes, many aren’t aware that one of the largest quakes to strike the country actually occurred near the Mississippi River. On December 16, 1811, at roughly 2:15am, a powerful 8.1 quake rocked northeast Arkansas in what is now known as the New Madrid Seismic Zone.  The earthquake was felt over much of the eastern United States, shaking people out of bed in places like New York City, Washington, DC, and Charleston, SC. The ground shook for an unbelievably long 1-3 minutes in areas hit hard by the quake, such as Nashville, TN and Louisville, KY. Ground movements were so violent near the epicenter that liquefaction of the ground was observed, with dirt and water thrown into the air by tens of feet.  President James Madison and his wife Dolly felt the quake in the White House while church bells rang in Boston due to the shaking there.

But the quakes didn’t end there. From December 16, 1811 through to March of 1812, there were over 2,000 earthquakes reported in the central Midwest with 6,000-10,000 earthquakes located in the “Bootheel” of Missouri where the New Madid Seismic Zone is centered.

The second principal shock,  a magnitude 7.8, occurred in Missouri weeks later on January 23, 1812, and the third, a 8.8, struck on February 7, 1812, along the  Reelfoot fault in Missouri and Tennessee.

https://weatherboy.com/todays-earthquake-in-the-heart-of-the-new-madrid-seismic-zone-serves-as-reminder-to-danger-there/