Posted on 06/22/2005 3:02:56 PM PDT by QQQQQ
South Carolina had a HUGE quake in the 1800's......at least a 7
"The Charleston quake damaged water wells as far away as northwest Georgia."
I can believ it. I've been looking hard for a source on my post about the granite domes being exposed, and have come across a few interesting things. The people of Charleston were cut off from the world for several days and thought that the rest of the world had been destroyed. The rest of the country thought that a huge earthquake and tidal wave had destroyed Charleston and that Florida had broken off and sunk in the Atlantic.
A 6 to 7 quake is about 90 percent certain, however, and they would be devastating enough if close enough to a city considering poor building codes.
Also, though the article doesn't say, obviously there would be a 50-60 percent chance of a quake slightly higher than 7, and that would be pretty dang bad if that happened.
The risk then quickly would taper off to 10 percent max for the 8. It is pure guesswork on my part, but a 7.5 would maybe be a 30 percent chance.
Tremor In Western Kentucky Felt In Four States
(CLINTON, Ky.) June 20, 2005, 10:25 AM -- The National Earthquake Center reports an earth tremor this morning measuring three-point-nine was centered at Clinton in Hickman County. It was the second earthquake within 10 hours to be centered in Hickman County, but both were of minor intensity. Last night's tremor occurred at 10 p.m. eastern time and was measured at 3.0.
A 4.0 tremor was felt across northwest Tennessee and southeast Kentucky last Thursday, but caused little damage.
Geophysicist John Minch at the National Earthquake Center in Golden, Colorado says it is not certain today's quake was on the New Madrid fault, but seismologists in Memphis think it was.
The quake at 8:21:41 a.m. was centered 10 miles southeast of Cairo, Illinois or 30 miles west southwest of Paducah. Minch says no damage reports have been received this morning.
The Long Point Fault crosses Memorial between Kirkwood and Wilcrest. It causes about a three- or four-foot elevation change at that point. It used to be visible where it crossed Dairy Ashford further west, but the repaving of Dairy Ashford some years ago made it hard to detect.
The fault crosses Wilcrest between Memorial and I-10 with another obvious elevation change, crosses I-10 a few blocks east of Wilcrest, and crosses Beltway 8 a block or two north of I-10. It then proceeds east, crossing Gessner just south of Westview. It then follows Westview for miles, switching from one side to the other. There are, or used to be, some spectacularly damaged houses near Westview that had been built on the fault -- they have tilted windows and doors, crooked rooflines, broken driveways, etc. The fault travels eventually crosses Long Point.
I mapped the fault once based on broken pavement, elevation changes, damaged houses, etc. It makes a fun project tracking it through neighborhoods. When the points are connected on an accurate map, such as a USGS map, you'll find that the fault generally runs in connected straight line segments.
The Long Point Fault is not the only active fault in Houston, but it is probably the best known.
Any elevation change in Houston is fairly remarkable. I obviously haven't been paying attention.
I don't doubt that there may have been some landslides in the Blue Ridge that were a result from the Charlston quake but I seriously doubt that those slides exposed the open rock faces and domes to any major extent in the S.W. counties.
My understanding of the rock faces/domes is that they are the caused by concentric exfoliation. The granite/gniess is fractured along concentric lines and eroded over time the mountain basically peels like an onion.
Also, had the quake created slides of the magnitude required to expose dome/rock faces, the resulting debris piles would still exist in situ at the foot of the faces. I've been all over those mountains and never encountered a debris pile of that magnitude.
Where did you hear this theory?
"Where did you hear this theory?"
It's not so much a theory as it was the lore and history of High Hampton. Everyone there "knew" this regarding the huge dome, looming over the lake and the old chestnut-bark sided lodge on the other side of the lake there. I've had no reason to doubt it until you challenged me on it. I'll admit, I've been looking for a source and have found nothing.
You can drive almost any road in the Houston area and drive across a fault. It is literally that bad. If you hit a bump, and notice it was formed by a linear crack across the road, chances are, you just passed over a fault.
Link to a decent photo of the face of this particular dome:
http://www.historichotels.org/Page/HotelPhotos/Hotel/High_Hampton_Inn.htm
I've never heard of that one. Is it close to the San Andreas?
If you visit Charleston, you can see huge iron bolts running through the buildings from one end to the other. They held the buildings together during quakes.
I remember reading about the 1812 quakes this article talks about. For about a year, the people in some states slept outside their homes. They felled trees perpendicular to the chasms that tended to open up, and built platforms on them for beds. There was one account of a steamboat being pushed upstream almost the length of the Mississippi.
Back in the '60s there was a fairly strong earthquake in Illinois. My mom was at a meeting in Decatur that day when the building began to shake and roll like crazy. Mom said you could see the floors pull away from walls. I don't remember though how much damage there was.
I didn't realize until this thread that we were still experiencing it at the surface level around here.
"If you visit Charleston, you can see huge iron bolts running through the buildings from one end to the other. They held the buildings together during quakes."
I thought those were installed afterwards to prevent the buildings from collapsing in a future earthquake? In any event, you can see them in the older parts of many southern cities as a result... look for a series of distinctive star shapes in black cast iron, higher up on the walls of masonry buildings.
Oh yea, some of them were moving an inch a year back in the late '70's. That is a lot when you are 30' above sea level!
Well over a million dollars in oil and gas royalties are at stake.
The land has dropped over seven feet in elevation during that time.
We're slipping into the sea, I tell ya....
If that ever changes.......we're doomed! DOOOOOMED!!!
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