As earthquakes keep rocking North Texas, residents are rattled

November 27, 2013 – TEXAS – On Tuesday morning, yet another earthquake rocked the small Tarrant County town of Azle. It was the sixth within a week in Tarrant and Parker counties. More than a dozen quakes have rattled North Texas in November. Azle residents are getting nervous and seismologists are trying to get to the bottom of what’s going on. Some point to natural gas drilling that’s happening in the Barnett Shale, a massive geological formation that covers about 20 North Texas counties.  But a geophysicist with the National Earthquake Information Center says more testing is needed to make such a connection. Donna Luce is worried. “I was sitting there watching TV, and my house just shook, and I’ve never felt that before, ever,” she said. “Now, actually, I’m afraid of sinkholes.” Debbie Raub and her husband, Fred, described the big quake with a 3.6 magnitude as “real spooky. Real loud boom, and then it just started shaking the ground under our mobile home,” she said. “Just rocking it. And our dogs, they go totally insane. They know it before it happens.” Each time there’s a quake, their two-bedroom trailer has to be re-leveled. “You just have to get under there, and jack it up in spots, put a level on underneath the trailer, and level it,” Debbie Raub said. “It’s just pulling the ground out beneath our stands.”

Fred Raub, who was born in Azle, says he doesn’t think the quakes are natural. He blames local natural gas drilling. “They say it ain’t what happens, but till then, we didn’t have it,” he said. “You gotta drill about every mile. You just start looking around at all the drills they’re putting down.” Don Blakeman, a geophysicist with the National Earthquake Information Center, says the quakes could be the result of oil and gas production. But he says more testing is needed to know that for sure. ”Obviously, if it is oil and gas production related, they might continue until that activity stops,” he said. “The other possibility is that it’s just a natural swarm, because we do see that sort of thing occurring sometimes in areas where we haven’t had quakes before.” A natural swarm is a series of small quakes. And Blakeman says they aren’t as dangerous as quakes with bigger magnitudes – quakes at 5.0 magnitudes can produce structural damage. In the meantime, in case the ground starts to shake again, Blakeman advises individuals and families to be prepared if a bigger quake strikes North Texas.  Scientists and other experts are reportedly teaming up with the U.S. Geological Survey to collect more data to learn more about why these quakes keep occurring in North Texas. –KERA