Earthquake shakes up north region of Arkansas

ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

MARSHALL -- The floor at the Sonic Drive In on U.S. 65 shook Monday night
as an earthquake sent tremors through northern Arkansas.
    Sharon Slay, 29, was bagging an order.
    "We heard a bang," she said. "It sort of shook the floor. We were just
standing here, and we felt it."
    Slay and her co-workers thought it was a sonic boom, but Waverly
Person, a geophysicist at the National Earthquake Information Center at Golden,
Colo., confirmed it was an earthquake of magnitude 3.9.
    "This is classified as a minor earthquake," Person said.
    By comparison, the earthquake center reported five earthquakes in or
just off the coast of California on Monday with an average magnitude of about 3.7.
    The quake struck at 8:29 p.m. centered in an area approximately 30 miles
north-northeast of Russellville.
    That would put the epicenter near the very lightly populated
southwestern corner of Van Buren County.
    The quake was caused by the earth settling, said Terri Pfeiffer,
spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management.
    "The earthquake wasn't on a fault line," she said.
    No aftershocks were reported as of 11 p.m. Monday evening. Although some
earthquakes are precursors of more to come, Person said Monday's most
likely is an isolated event.
    A dispatcher at the Searcy County sheriff's office said she was
inundated with about 200 phone calls.
    "The floor shook, everything shook in here," said the dispatcher, who
asked not to be identified. "People reported ground, trees shaken."
    A dispatcher at the state police troop headquarters in Harrison said
their office had taken telephone calls about the quake, but that no damage or 
injuries had been reported. Similar reports came from sheriff's office dispatchers 
in Baxter, Izard, Marion and Van Buren counties.
    The earthquake center in Colorado said it had received reports the quake was 
felt in those counties, plus Newton, Stone, Searcy and Boone counties.
    Dispatcher Aubrey Gordon in the Van Buren County sheriff's office at
Clinton said many calls came in shortly after the quake.
    "They said it just shook their house," Gordon said.
                        
Information for this article was contributed by The Associated Press.
                        

This article was published on Tuesday, June 27, 2000