It was actually only a “micro-earthquake,” 2.8; altogether unimpressive, but mighty exciting stuff for this place; half the folks in town are proudly telling anyone who’ll listen that the epicenter was right underneath their house. The old boys at the Feed and Seed will be chewing it over for months.
Come to find out, with the help of the Geological Society of America Bulletin, that Burnsville has its own fault…a high-grade fault, thank you very much. Who knew?
“…New mapping and structural, petrologic, and geochronologic data from western North Carolina show that the contact between the eastern and western Blue Ridge provinces is a Devonian high-grade, dextral strike-slip fault zone, the Burnsville fault. …The Burnsville fault extends ~100 km in northwestern North Carolina and likely correlates with other faults that continue into northwesternmost North Carolina and southwestern Virginia, and southwestern North Carolina.”
You can be the first retailer in your town to sell Simpson Strong-Tie earthquake retrofit products! I’m buying stock even as we speak! Little blip in sales in the SouthEast.
Glad you’re okay. The experts still know little even though they give their best efforts to understand seismic behavior.
There are quite a few old faults in this part of the country. Most of them are inactive, but they can slip occasionally. I remember a small one ~ 4 that woke me up early in the morning last year. Put a crack in the foundation of my house actually ( I was at school at the time, but my mother pointed it out to me when I went home)
In about 3,000 years or so, the Saint Croix fault line will slip a bit, and the Twin Cities can have some fun too. Actually, I did feel a tremor while living there back in the early 90s, but I don’t think it was the St. Croixs’ fault.
I seem to recall a story about 20 or so years back that reported that students at UC Berkeley had identifed 3 extremely small minor faults that ran near campus. They were given the privilege of naming them, and came up with:
My Fault
Your Fault
Dean XXXX’s Fault (I forget the Dean’s actual last name)
The story was so perfect I’ve been afraid of looking into it further and finding that it wasn’t true.
Yes, I did laugh about hearing about your earthquake (sorry!).
Californians (at least the ones living near faults) tend to be a bit macho about earthquakes, and it needs to be at least a Richter 5 before most of us pay much attention. They’re dangerous, but you make your plans in advance and go on with your life.
Now tornados and hurricanes - those scare me silly!
Oh, certainly. Listen to some local radio stations and everything, including hurricanes and earthquakes, is Bush’s fault. And it is Bezerkeley, after all.
Let’s hope they don’t get any bigger. That might be too much of a good thing.
