I realize the subject of the Oklahoma earthquakes is not weather related but it can be a very scary subject for the residents in the area...lets just call it earth sciences. People who have no interest can just move on to the next topic in this forum.
I live 7 miles from the San Andreas fault and I experience M 2 to M 4 events fairly routinely. The modest swaying and cracking sounds of a 4.5 are normal here. But at one time in my life, I lived within 50 FEET of a major fault. One morning my wife and I felt a massive almost explosion effect to our building - my wife just starting crying. It was as if a truck had hit our building.
I expected the SF Bay area to be in ruins.
It was an M 2.4!
But I was 50 feet from the epicenter. I never recovered from that experience. A lot of earthquake energy can be driven straight up in some areas.
Our buildings here are built to massive, expensive, and complex earthquake standards. We are required to make some structural walls called "sheer walls" among other retrofits. The entire wall of the house or building is covered, top to bottom and side to side, with 3/4" plywood with large nails every 3 inches in every stud and plate. (nails tend to bend where screws tend to sheer)
I am deeply concerned that the Midwest is not prepared to adopt west coast earthquake standards for good reason - the cost would be in the billions with a B. A friend of mine living in Napa Valley, was living ON a fault line and a M 5.5 nearly destroyed his house. Deductible on earthquake insurance here is about $35,000 for an average house. He made the necessary repairs to his house but the repair cost debt eventually caused him to loose his very successful business and ruined his life.
Of all the earthquake seismographs from the Oklahoma area I have seen on my modest seismograph, the example I showed above is the largest I have ever seen.
I am extremely sympathetic to the "earthquake problem" in the midwest. I hope we can find a cause and a solution - to make this statement of mine as non-political as possible.
