NACOGDOCHES, TX (KTRE) -
For the second time in a week, residents of the Timpson area were
woken up to an early morning quake. This trembler rattled things around 6:30
this morning; it was a 2.8-magnitude quake struck near County Road 4027.
With a second tremor since last week, many residents in East Texas
are now asking questions like, why have there been so many quakes?
There have been eight tremors since May 2012.
East Texas News sat down with Dr. Wesley Brown, a Stephen F.
Austin professor and an expert on seismic activity for answers to some of the
questions.
"Mostly what we are experiencing now are the aftershocks of the May17th
earthquake which was the main shock," Brown said. "There is no way to predict
what will happen but we expect them to be small."
Another popular question - is the practice of fracking causing the
earthquakes?
"In Texas, we have not had any evidence to link fracking to
earthquakes," Brown said.
Brown stated that a more logical answer to the Timpson quake is the
fact that the town is part of the Mount Enterprise fault line.
However, the biggest question is, should residents be worried
about a big quake?
"As I said before it is hard to predict, but we really don't have
any evidence that a bunch of small quakes usually lead to a bigger one," Brown
said. "If the May 17th was the main shock, then the chances are the ones that
follow are usually smaller, so right now I am not concerned about a much larger
earthquake, but there is no way of telling."
Those are comforting words for an area not used to these events.
Copyright 2013 KTRE. All rights reserved.
Dr. Wesley Brown
