Earthquake Update

It didn’t have anything at all to do with my prediction , but the city of San Francisco was in the middle of a major disaster drill billed as the Great California Shakeout– preparing for the next big quake – when the ground began to move yesterday.  The quake was centered across the bay, and was the first of two that were felt in the area yesterday.

The two small earthquakes hit the city of Berkeley on Thursday, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS). The quakes, measuring 4.0 and 3.8 magnitude on the Richter Scale, were centered within 1-2 miles of Berkeley, which is located on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay. The 4.0 magnitude tremor struck at 2:41 pm, Pacific time, and the 3.8 magnitude earthquake struck at 8:16 pm.

Well….. not the big one I predicted – and am still betting on – but I’m sticking to my guns.

What I was not prepared for, and took me totally by surprise, was that an even bigger earthquake, a  4.8 magnitude tremor, struck southwest of San Antonio Texas in Karnes County yesterday morning.  The quake hit at 7:24, sending tremors throughout downtown San Antonio.  It was felt as far away as Round Rock, north of Austin.

Earthquakes of this magnitude are a rare event in Texas, and Thursday’s quake was the strongest on record for Texas’ southern region. The previous largest quake had a magnitude of 4.3 back in 1993.

UT freshman Megan Ziegler said she felt the earthquake from her Kinsolving dorm room around 7:30 a.m.

“I looked out the window and thought it had to be something else,” Ziegler said. “I lived in Uzbekistan in high school and felt earthquakes all the time there, so this felt familiar, but I had never heard of earthquakes in Texas before.”

Nicholas Hayman, a research associate and lecturer at the Jackson School of Geosciences, said the recorded location and strength make it difficult to understand the exact causes of the earthquake.

“This did not really happen on the Balcones escarpment so there’s no clear surface information.” Hayman said. “All passive margin earthquakes (those that are not on major plate boundaries) are a bit mysterious — actual causes are really speculative.”

San Antonio Police Department spokespersons said they received no earthquake related dispatch calls Thursday morning. No injuries or damage was reported according to the Associated Press.