New Mexico shaken by ‘historically unusual’ 3.8 magnitude earthquake

October 18, 2011 – SANTA FE – A 3.8 magnitude earthquake “is unusual for this area, historically,” Richard Aster, a professor of Geophysics at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, wrote the New Mexican in an email Monday. “The present estimate of the epicenter is about half way between Santa Fe and Espanola. This is a large enough event that there may be felt aftershocks.” Monday’s temblor, at 3.8, is small compared to the earth-moving quakes recorded in Japan, California or other hot zones. But in New Mexico, 3.8 is a major event. There were the two earthquakes around Socorro in 1906, including one in November of that year that shook four chimneys and plaster off the Socorro County Courthouse and a cornice fell on the northwest corner of the two-story adobe Masonic Temple was thrown onto its first floor. More recently, there was a 5.0 quake 25 miles west of Raton and a 4.2 magnitude temblor on Dec. 19, 2005 near Carlsbad, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It appears the largest quake was a 5.1 trembler near Dulce in 1966. Elvira Garcia and Becky Romero of Nambe knew as soon as they heard their dishes and glasses tinkle and windows rattle Monday morning, they were experiencing something new. “We hear experimental explosions from the lab,” Romero said of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. “We hear sonic booms and crashes on (State Route) 503. But this was totally different. When things started shaking, that really frightened me. I could hear the dishes and glasses tinkling.” Garcia heard the rumble while she was on the telephone with her sister. “The cat ran across from one room to the other,” Garcia recalled late Monday morning. The shaking knocked a photograph and several knickknacks off shelves along with rattling her nerves. “I’ve been through the big floods in the arroyos with the pigs rolling down,” Garcia said. “But never have I felt something like that.” –Santa Fe NM