Carla Mader - whose front yard of her 119-year-old house off County Road 327 is in Milam County, and her backyard is in Burleson County - said she was sitting in her living room Saturday evening when “all of a sudden the house started shaking and pictures on the wall started moving.”
“I went running outside and looked for a plane crash or a funnel cloud,” Mrs. Mader said. “It was absolutely bizarre, it did not last but a few seconds, long enough to get your attention.”
The family also contemplated whether an oil or gas well explosion or sonic boom had occurred, until Burleson County Emergency Management Coordinator Brian Prescott drove up and advised that the tremor was a seismic episode.
This revelation brought back a memory of 40-plus years, when her dad advised that the house is situated on a fault line, Mrs. Mader said.
Burleson County resident Ruby Gaston said her house shook, but nothing was broken.
“It really scared us. We thought the propane tank might have burst. We ran out of the house to see if there was smoke anywhere. We never felt this before and we have been here 30 years,” Mrs. Gaston said.
Milam County Chief Sheriff’s Deputy Greg Kouba said the sheriff’s department received a call Saturday night from Prescott, who was following up on a report of an explosion that shook houses and knocked pictures off the walls.
“We sent out a patrol car to the area to see if we could observe any damage or to provide any assistance to county residents, but didn’t find anything,” Kouba said.
On Monday morning, Milam County Emergency Management coordinator Susan Reinders spoke with earthquake center officials, who reported that a magnitude 2.7 earthquake was recorded late Saturday evening in Milano. They could not provide any information on future earthquakes or state whether they would increase in strength, Kouba said. He added that if residents experience future tremors, to contact the Milam County Sheriff’s Office at (254) 697-7033. No property damage has been reported, he said.
Four Milano-area families reported feeling tremors, but there may be more who have not notified authorities, Mrs. Reinders said.
“Actually it got generated through calls going to Burleson County,” Mrs. Reinders said. “Once they started investigating it, then it fell across the Milam County line as well. Several individuals said they did experience a lot of shaking in their house, so it caused them to run outside.”
Some residents on County Road 327 and Burleson County Road 308 reported a similar incident about three months ago, but the U.S.G.S. Earthquake Center did not record any seismic readings for that time, she said.
At least a half dozen Burleson County residents reported the tremor to authorities as a possible explosion, which prompted emergency services to dispatch volunteer firefighters to the area, Prescott said.
“I talked to people and they did not hear an explosion, but it just shook the houses,” Prescott said. “One lady in Burleson County said it shook the pot off her stove onto the floor. Many people were afraid their trailer houses and their homes were going to fall off the foundations, it was that bad. It was significant. I checked to see if possibly it were a sonic boom, but if it had been low enough to cause that much vibration, people would have heard or seen an airplane. The only explanation was tremor.”
When Prescott interviewed several Milam County residents, he learned that the affected area apparently is on top of a fault line, which prompted him to contact the earthquake center.
“It was a 2.7 magnitude earthquake,” Prescott said. “ One of the things we need to stress is we are not in an active seismic area, we are in a major fault zone. It was just a tremor, but the earth did not open up or anything. It did scare … a lot of people.”
Lisa Wald, U.S.G.S. geophysicist in Colorado, said the Milano tremor is considered low on the scale, and is categorized as a “small earthquake.” The Richter scale used to grade earthquake magnitude, ranges from one to 10, with each step about 60 times greater than the preceding step.
“For Texas, they don’t get many quakes, so any earthquakes in Texas is significant,” Ms. Wald said. “It is not unusual for there to be earthquakes in Texas, but they don’t happen often.”
This year, the U.S.G.S. detected only two other Texas earthquakes, both in the Panhandle: a magnitude 2.9 tremor June 15 and a magnitude 2.6 quake Feb. 7.
The largest quake recorded in Texas occurred as a magnitude 5.8 in 1931 near Valentine, she said.
A seismographic network records earthquakes. Each seismic station in the network measures the movement of the ground at the site. The slip of one block of rock over another in an earthquake releases energy that makes the ground vibrate. That vibration pushes the adjoining piece of ground and causes it to vibrate, and thus the energy travels out from the earthquake in a wave, according to the U.S. Geological Survey Web site.
The Milano quake has its own Web page, which can be viewed at:
http://earthquake.usga.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/us2007.php. Residents that experienced the tremor are asked to access the Did You Feel It link and complete a questionnaire, Ms. Wald said.
jwilliams@temple-telegram.com
