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Miami Valley family shaken awake by Oklahoma quake

There are about 4,200 total wells across the state and about 700 in a 15,000-square-mile “area of interest” in the area that includes the epicenter of Saturday’s temblor, near Pawnee.

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Wells within 10 miles of the quake’s epicenter will shut down completely within 10 days, Oklahoma Corporation Commission spokesman Matt Skinner said.

“That fault zone is really well known in Kansas because it produced one of the largest earthquakes that has ever been noted in the state which is about a 5 point 3 in 1867”, Buchanan said.

Oklahoma geologists have documented links between increased seismic activity in the state and the injection into the ground of wastewater from oil and gas production, according to a report from a state agency previous year.

Fallin said the state also will work with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which has “sole jurisdiction” over disposal wells in another nearby county.

That’s not clear. The state of Oklahoma has declared a state of emergency in the wake of Saturday’s quake.

The hope, King says, is they will have a report of all the damage by Tuesday. Analysis is necessary to link this specific natural disaster to disposal well activity, but it fits with the recent trend in the region that researchers believe clearly points to earthquakes being induced by injections.

Fallin tweeted Saturday morning that the Oklahoma Department of Transportation is checking bridges in the Pawnee area for damage.

Putting things in perspective, Dr. Jeremy Boak, director of the Oklahoma Geological Survey, said that California experiences much stronger, but less frequent earthquakes that does Oklahoma.

The state of Oklahoma has been suffering from numerous earthquakes for the past years.

It was centered about 9 miles northwest of Pawnee, Okla., prompting local officials to dispatch officers to check key facilities, such as the local water plant. “Most of it’s brick and mortar, old buildings from the early 1900s”. “The central USA doesn’t tend to get a lot of 5-plus earthquakes”, he said.

There were no immediate reports of any casualties or injuries in Pawnee but several of the town’s buildings suffered damages. “It just started shaking”, said Wills, who lives about 2 miles outside of town.

USGS geophysicist Robert Sanders described the quake as “one of the largest events in Oklahoma in the last few years”. Both are shallow quakes, during which shaking is more intense, like setting off “a bomb directly under a city”, USGS seismologist Susan Hough has said. It was recorded at shortly past 7 a.m.

No damage was reported in the Norman and Moore area.

On social media Saturday morning, people reported feeling the quake across Oklahoma and in Kansas, Arkansas, Nebraska, Texas and Missouri.

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2016 Earthquake Damage Forecast For Oklahoma Is The Same As The Earthquake Potential At The San Andreas Fault