The earthquake risk for Oklahoma and southern Kansas is expected to remain significant in 2017, threatening 3 million people with seismic events that can produce damaging shaking, according to a new U.S. Geological Survey forecast released Wednesday.
J Berry Harrison captured a photo of bricks sprawled across the street from a building in Pawnee, Oklahoma, after a 5.8 magnitude earthquake struck the area. The quake was felt in seven states on Sept. 3, 2016, according to officials. (Credit: CNN)
The seismic risk is forecast to be so high that the chance of damage in Oklahoma and southern Kansas is expected to be similar to that of natural earthquakes in California, USGS scientists writing in the journal Seismological Research Letters said Wednesday.
In 2016 alone, Oklahoma experienced several damaging earthquakes, including a 5.0 temblor in November near the central oil town of Cushing — which proclaims itself the “Pipeline Crossroads of the World” — that dislodged unreinforced bricks in chimneys and storefronts, sending them tumbling onto the sidewalks. Oklahoma also saw the largest quake ever recorded in the state in 2016, when a 5.8 earthquake struck near Pawnee.
The earthquakes are thought to be the result of disposal of wastewater deep underground following fracking, a method to extract petroleum. Injecting wastewater deep underground is not thought to trigger earthquakes everywhere — in North Dakota, for example — but is widely believed by scientists to be a problem in Oklahoma.
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