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Eleven quakes have struck southern Colorado in the past 24 hours. Click the image for a larger view. Credits: USGS / Google Earth |
Nearly 10 years to the date of a similar event, a series of earthquakes struck southern Colorado over the past 24 hours. The most powerful of the temblors, a magnitude 5.3, was the state’s largest since 1973 and felt 200 miles away.
The first of 12 quakes in the past 24 hours occurred at 7:52am on Monday morning. That event was a relatively mild magnitude 2.9 but was followed by a strong magnitude 4.6 quake Monday evening and then a magnitude 3.0 quake a few hours later.
Those were but precursors however to the biggest event, a magnitude 5.3 quake that struck at 11:46pm Monday night. According to the US Geological Survey the quake was centered 9 miles west southwest of Trinidad or 20 miles northwest of Raton, New Mexico. The epicenter was at a relatively shallow depth of 2.5 miles.
Some homes in the area near the quake’s epicenter sustained damage with cracks in walls and fallen chimney’s having been reported. The Las Animas County Sheriff’s Office said some landslides occurred near roads and highways. No injuries were reported from the sizeable temblor.
The USGS has received reports of the shaking from the quake being felt as far away to the north as Denver and the Colorado Front Range. Responses were also recorded in western Kansas and northern New Mexico.
Since the main quake, the shaking has continued. Eight more quakes of magnitude 2.0 or greater have been recorded, four of those magnitude 3.0 or bigger. The two biggest were a magnitude 3.5 at 12:56am and a magnitude 3.8 at 1:17am.
The magnitude 5.3 quake Monday night was the state’s largest since 1973 and occurred nearly 10 years to the date since a similar swarm struck the area.
Vince Matthews, State Geologist of Colorado, said that the agency would be working with the US Geological Survey on assessing the recent quakes.
In recent years the state has deployed seismic monitoring equipment in the Trinidad area to monitor activity and that will be utilized to help with the analysis. A damage assessment will be performed and any outward signs of the quake such as surface ruptures or displacement will be looked at.
In 2001 a similar “swarm” shook the area near Trinidad. During that event, from August 28 and September 21 of that year, 12 earthquakes of magnitude 2.8 to 4.6 struck just west of the southern Colorado city in the same area as the recent quakes.
Matthews said that the 2001 swarm occurred on a relatively small fault that at the time was noted as being capable of generating a magnitude 5.8 earthquake. A temblor of that size in the area could cause damage well into the millions of dollars.
Three faults in Colorado are thought to be capable of generating a magnitude 7.0 or greater earthquake in Colorado.
The Cheraw Fault runs 28 miles from roughly Cheraw to Haswell in the southeastern corner of the state. The others, the Northern Sangre de Christo Fault and the Southern Sawatch Fault, are located in the mountain ranges from which they draw their names. The Sangre de Christo Fault runs more than 110 miles in length from the New Mexico border north while the Sawatch Fault is nearly 30 miles long from Leadville south to the South Arkansas River.
While normally not particularly active, there are approximately 100 potentially active faults in Colorado and more than 400 temblors of magnitude 2.5 have occurred in the state since 1870. The state’s largest quake occurred on November 7, 1882 along the northern Front Range and measured 6.6 on the Richter Scale.
According to the Colorado Division of Emergency Management, the costliest quake was a 5.5 magnitude temblor that occurred on August 9, 1967 and was centered near Commerce City. The quake caused more than $1 million worth of damage and is thought to have been caused by the injection of liquid waste into the earth at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal.
Fuente: Examiner
Por: Yashira Laboy
Para: Noticias Velad
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