On New Year’s Eve day, there was a 4.0 earthquake in my hometown, Youngstown, OH. The curious part is that this region is not known to be seismically active…. i.e. earthquakes are not supposed to happen there. Youngstown is exposed to a variety of other natural disasters, such as tornadoes and blizzards (not to mention the constantly, depressing gray skies), but adding earthquakes to the list may just push residents over the edge. I got a call from both my sister and mom about the quake. They both felt the house shaking and my mom described it as feeling like a car had crashed into her house. Scary.
Anyhow, you may be wondering what caused this earthquake. Well, it looks like we did. “Recent earthquakes in Ohio and Oklahoma have been directly linked to deep wells used to dispose of liquid wastes for hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” of natural gas, according to geological experts“. This is happening in other places too, like Oklahoma and England. This is extremely frightening, and I’m surprised I haven’t heard much of a public outcry over it. Maybe people are getting complacent about how we are ruining our planet…hopefully not.
On this blog you can read about and see photos of my experiences as a scientific researcher and adventure junkie. Please drop by and say hello!
not complacent, just worried about how it will turn out. jobs versus earth. we are desperately in need of jobs in our area but….I am opposed to earthquakes. you are right, gray sky, tornado’s and NOW earthquakes! shoot at least in California we would have sunny sky’s while our house shook!
gives my argument to Mark that we are mooooving south when bailey graduates. at least with hurricanes we would have advanced warning.
There is a lot of interest in starting fracking in NY too. But there is a lot of concern and as far as I know, nothing has been passed yet.