Stateline 1201 Master Script

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SOMETHING’S GOING ON BENEATH THE BUCOLIC FIELDS OF EASTERN OKLAHOMA COUNTY.  TROUBLE LIES COILED UNDER MAIN STREET JONES.  THE LOCAL LEADERSHIP IS AT A LOSS.

S402/C0020 9:14:14

RAY POLAND:  “I ACTUALLY HAD SEVERAL PEOPLE CALL CITY HALL WANTING TO KNOW WHAT THE MAYOR WAS GOING TO DO ABOUT THE EARTHQUAKES.”

BOOTH

EARTHQUAKES ARE NOT UNHEARD OF IN OKLAHOMA, A LITTLE OVER 50 YEARS AGO A PRETTY GOOD SIZED ONE SHOOK THE OKLAHOMA CITY AREA.  IT SPOILED A PHOTOGRAPH OF A BABY GIRL WHICH WAS BEING PRINTED AT THE TIME.

IN THE EARLY PART OF 2009 SOMETHING GEOLOGICALLY SIGNIFICANT BEGAN TO HAPPEN HERE.  NOT A “BIG ONE” BUT A WHOLE BUNCH OF LITTLE ONES.

S401/c0002

8:46:31

AUSTIN HOLLAND:  “WE HAVE HAD ROUGHLY SEVEN EARTHQUAKES IN OKLAHOMA COUNTY BEFORE THE JONES SWARM STARTED, AND SINCE THE JONES SWARM HAS STARTED WE HAVE HAD A FEW HUNDRED EARTHQUAKES THAT HAVE OCURRED.”

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THE EARTHQUAKE SWARM IS THE TALK OF THE TOWN IN JONES AND THIS EDITION OF STATELINE ASKS THE QUESTION BEING TOSSED AROUND THE TABLES IN THE LOCAL DINER:  “WHAT’S SHAKIN’?”

TRT

Kiwanis Meeting  

11:34:41    S-402   C0036

I think we might be able to build the library without having any debt. I think we might be able to swing that.

At the weekly Kiwanis meeting in Jones town leaders discuss plans for improvements, a new library, fixing the sidewalks and street lamps. But recently the talk has taken an unusual turn. 

Bill Hoag  

12:18:19    S-402    C0047

You could feel it rolling and you could even be sitting in a chair and it would move the chair, you could see the pictures on the wall move a little bit. It did knock some spices off the spice rack one night.

In January 2009, the ground in eastern Oklahoma County began to shake, and it’s been shaking off and on ever since. A lot of the quakes center around the small town of Jones.

Mayor Ray Poland  

9:18:42    S-402   C0020

Jones is a community that is over 100 years old. We celebrated our 100th anniversary I believe it was in 2005.

“Rooster Bill”

14:22:39    S-500   C0039

Well it is mostly farming. It is all cattle, horses, hay, mostly cattle. We have a lot of horse people around here. Racing horses, cutting horses, but it is strictly a farm/ranching community.

Police Chief Thomas Pletcher  

10:03:53    S-520    C0009

It is one of those places where everybody waves at each other. Everybody says “Hi” when they walk into the stores. It is real quiet our town our crime rate is really low. It is real friendly. Real personable here, that is why I like it.

Mayor Ray Poland  

9:19:17    S-402   C0020

Jones is a great place to live. We have a lot of great things going on right now. We just got through remodeling city hall, the police department offices and our council chambers and court room.

John McEwen  

12:00:25   S-402     C0046

It is a little bedroom community mostly but friendly people, good people. A nice place to live, I recommend it.

Mayor Ray Poland

9:23:34    S-402   C0020

It’s really nice being in a small town where people look after each other and are willing to pitch in and help any way they can.

John Elerick  

12:44:15     S-520     C0018

Where we are from that kind of makes it special to us. Just like when I was in the Navy and people asked where I was from I said “Jones, Oklahoma where the water makes you beautiful.”

When news happens in Jones you’ll hear about it first at the Rooster Café.

“Rooster Bill”  

14:23:39    S-500   C0039

About three months ago when they first started. Small ones. Everyone got shook up. You know uh oh earth quake. And we thought somebody had run into the building. And it was an earthquake.

Bill Hoag

12:18:19    S-402    C0047

One evening it was about ten o'clock at night, we had already retired for the evening and I thought pictures were going to fall off the wall in the bedroom because it really shook things there.

Vivian Listen

13:27:43 S-500    C0032

Well it kind of made us think about when the first sonic boom was first here years ago. The first one we ever heard you know. It sounded a little bit like that you know but it was loud here anyway. But that is kind of the way, kind of a loud roar then just a shaking.

Police Chief Thomas Pletcher  

10:02:26    S-520    C0009

It feels like if you were close to a big truck and it hits a pot hole in the earth that is what it feels like. Some are bigger than others. It sounds like thunder then the ground rumbles a little bit.

John McEwen  

12:01:54    S-402    C0046

So of the pictures on the wall would tilt a little around the house. It sounded like a sonic boom. That is exactly what it feels like a sonic boom. In fact that is what we thought it was when it first started. Was a sonic boom.

John Elerick

12:51:22   S-520     C0018

Just boom, boom, boom.

Timothy Reese

10:47:05    S-500    C0028

Well I was moving in. The night I moved in they had one of the largest earthquakes they have had in Jones, that has hit and it was because I was just hanging up pictures and they were falling off the wall and I thought that maybe I just didn't get the hangers up right.

“Rooster Bill”  

14:25:53    S-500   C0039

That one there we had stuff fall off the wall rattling the coffee cups and everybody started to get a little shook up. Wanted to know what to do in an earthquake and I said “Well... You just wait for the roof to fall down I guess.”

Ruthanna Cagle

16:45:27   S-401   C0001

So my husband and I were upstairs. We were in bed watching a television show and there is just this crash that sounded exactly like a huge truck ran through the bottom of our house. And I thought that's exactly, I thought somebody's run through our wall.

Ruthanna Cagle

17:05:29   S-401   C0001

So we both jump up and we run downstairs and we're looking all over the place and nothing's there. And after a few minutes, my husband goes you know, I think that may have been an earthquake. And I thought he is crazy. That is the silliest thing I have ever heard in my life.

Timothy Reese  

10:47:34    S-500    C0028

I have been in hurricanes, tornados, I was in New Orleans when Katrina Hit or just before Katrina hit I have never been in an earthquake you would think Jones Oklahoma would be the wrong place to go to be in an earthquake.

Basketball Girls

8:32:35   S-402   C016

I don't need proof to say I felt one. I felt an earthquake in Jones in the middle of America.

David Lapham

10:06:39   S-105    C0002

I was looking at the computer and boy, I mean, it shook hard. Normally things don't, like I said, don't shake me. But that one would be like if you were sitting there and all the sudden a tornado started taking the roof off. That was kind of the feeling you had. It was like 'wow! What's happening?'

Police Chief Thomas Pletcher  

9:58:28    S-520    C0009

About the first week or two of earthquakes I wasn't feeling any of them but I was getting phone calls about them. Because typically if you are in car you can't feel them. So I was getting phone calls from people asking me what was going on. I am clueless because I didn't feel any. You know people would call and say did you feel that. You know 20 or 30 people calling at one time.

Mayor Ray Poland

9:14:14    S-402   C0020

I actually had several people call city hall wanting to know what the Mayor was going to do about the earthquakes. I didn't have an opportunity to talk to them but I think if I can figure out a way to stop the earthquakes then I think maybe world domination might be on my plate. If I get that power then I might get the power to do a lot of other things.

Mayor Ray Poland  

9:07:34    S-402   C0020

I was actually visiting my mother who lives in Bixby and I got a call from emergency management director that said that we just had an earthquake what should she do. Well I didn't know what to do. I had never been prepared for an earthquake.

Mayor Ray Poland

9:11:00    S-402   C0020

I grew up in California and never experienced an earthquake...yeah, waited till I was 50 years old and Mayor of Jones before I ever experienced an earthquake.

Mayor Ray Poland

9:08:02    S-402   C0020

So I got started calling around, got on the computer and learned how to contact the USGS, spoke with them they directed me the Oklahoma Geological Survey, which is in Leonard, Oklahoma, which is about 5 miles away from where my mom lives in Bixby. So I went over and talked to them and they gave me a computer print out of the seismograph of when the earthquake hit in Jones, how big it was.

A 10,000 percent increase in seismic activity caught the attention of the Oklahoma Geological Survey. They sent seismologist Austin Holland to take a look.

Austin Holland

9:11:17    S-401   C0002

Oklahoma County has been one of the counties that hasn’t been incredibly active but it has had seven earthquakes in Oklahoma County. Before the Jones swarm started. Since the Jones swarm we have had a few hundred earthquakes in the area. That is a dramatic uptake. We don't know if it is unusual or if it is just part of the natural sort of rhythm of the earth in this part of the world.

Earthquakes in Oklahoma may be unusual, but the reports of what people are feeling are pretty typical.

Austin Holland

9:18:40    S-401   C0002

There are three types of waves generated in an earthquake. Three basic types. The first is a primary wave or a P-wave. And it is a compression wave. So if it is traveling in this direction its motion is like this. It is comparable to the way sound travels in air. And they move very fast, about 6 km/s in the crust of the earth. The second kind of wave is called a secondary wave or an S-wave. And it travels back and forth if it is travel in this direction it will go like this.

Austin Holland

9:20:10    S-401   C0002

In the Jones area the people are hearing and sometimes feeling the P-wave and it rattles stuff and it is really high frequency following that the motion the big shaking they feel is the S-wave.

Large quakes are possible in Oklahoma. A quake near El Reno registered 5.5 on the Richter scale; Minor damage was reported as far away as Oklahoma City. That was in 1952. Sizemologists believe that in 600 a.d. there was a really big earthquake along the largest fault line in the state near Meers. That one was a 6.5.  So far the quakes in eastern Oklahoma County have been small ones.

Austin Holland

8:46:31    S-401   C0002

We have had roughly 7 earthquakes in Oklahoma County before the Jones swarm started, and since the Jones swarm has started we have had a few hundred earthquakes that have occurred. And I don't have and exact number because I am still frantically trying to get through all the data.

The data is coming in from 10 new accelerometers, which have been deployed in and around Jones.  When an earthquake happens Holland can check the readings from all ten stations in a matter of seconds.

Austin Holland

8:47:23    S-401   C0002

It is very exciting to have such and abundance of data. In a place that is not known for its earthquake activity.

One of the accelerometers is in Coach Jim Moery’s high school science class.

Coach Jim Moery  

11:59:29    S-404    C0065

Well I was actually getting ready for track practice and the secretary called and said there was a USGS wanted to talk to me and so I talked to Austin and he explained the project. What he was wanting to do, he said he was going to set up some of these seismometers, and was interested if I would like to have one up here at the school.

Austin Holland  

8:52:30    S-401   C0002

It wasn't the quietest place because it was sitting in the corner in their classroom. But it worked out well it is one of our best stations.

Coach Jim Moery  

11:51:25    S-404    C0065

And our kids got to be part of science in action. I mean we are learning new things about our state and our kids whether they are a part of it or not at least they are getting to witness it first hand.

Coach Jim Moery  

12:01:25    S-404    C0065

We had two earthquakes on January 15th. The first one was a 4.0 in magnitude and the other one which was a bout 15 or twenty minutes later there was a 3.8. They both occurred while I was teaching class. The first one was a sonic boom type of a shake.

Coach Jim Moery

12:01:52 S-404    C0065

And then the one that came after it which was the 3.8 had more of a rolling effect to it. You could kind of hear it coming a little bit almost like an ocean wave or maybe a jet airplane noise. You could kind of feel the floor come up under your feet.

Austin Holland/Coach Moery

9:59:03   S-404   C0003

Hey Coach - Hello Austin, how are you? Pretty good, - Good to see you again. Nice to see you. Well, shall we take a look at this thing? Yeah.

Austin Holland/Coach Moery

10:00:25   S-404   C0005

Hey the kids have had a lot of fun having that in here this year. Did they look at a lot of the records? Oh yeah. We'd have a lot of kids come in and say did we have an earthquake last night? I thought I heard something shake, so we can go right to it, look it up and see what was going on. Yeah.

Coach Jim Moery  

11:52:17    S-404    C0065

The kids probably like everybody else were expecting some type of machine that was moving and doing all that stuff and when we got our little blue box over there it is not really much to look at. They were kind of really that is it? I said yeah but here is what we can do with it.

In December of 2007, long before the earthquakes there was an ice storm. There was an electrical fire and the high school burned to the ground.

Today there is a brand new high school where the old one used to sit, and it’s time to move the meter into Coach Moery’s new classroom.

Austin Holland  

25:49:12     S-404     C0022

We no longer have a network connection working here where the instrument has sat since Jan. And this instrument has been one of our best it has recorded on average a few earthquakes a day.

Austin Holland  

11:11:01    S-404     C0051

Alright coach I have got it configured now I just have to restart it and we will see if it talks to the high school wireless. Ok well let's see what we got.

Austin Holland  

8:52:47    S-401   C0002

I haven't done as much of this as I would like but one of the things that I think is important is getting kids excited about science and learning about the sciences being done in their neck of the woods.

Coach Jim Moery  

11:53:36    S-404    C0065

They are just wanting to know basically earthquake knowledge in general. You know, “Why are we having earthquakes out here?”

With the instrument in its new home students will continue to pour over the data and looking for an answer to the question everyone in eastern Oklahoma County is asking, “Why.” Why are there so many earthquakes all of a sudden and why are they centered in such a small area?

Austin Holland

8:47:53    S-401   C0002

Well you know the why is a very difficult thing. And certainly my research isn't far enough to maybe identifying a why.

Austin Holland

8:31:34    S-401   C0001

Swarms are not that uncommon. They happen in a number of different settings. They are sort of a surprise here we haven't seen a swarm that has lasted as long as this one has lasted.

Oil and gas production is a primary suspect, particularly disposal wells, where the saltwater is injected into the earth have been shown, in some cases, to cause small quakes.

Mayor Ray Poland  

9:13:38    S-402   C0020

I've heard all kinds of speculation to oil companies drilling around town. I don't know where there are any oil rigs set up to do any drilling around here.

Tulsa-based New Dominion, LLC has disposal wells in eastern Oklahoma County. They pump, on average, 3.5 million gallons of saltwater a day into the Arbuckle formation, along a fault known as the Nemaha Ridge.

Austin Holland  

8:48:44    S-401   C0002

Drilling cannot cause earthquakes. Drilling is just poking a hole in the rock. Drilling itself is not a cause to trigger earthquakes. There have been earthquakes triggered from disposal wells. And these are injecting large volumes of water into the sub surface and they act sort of like a lubricant on a fault if they are aligned properly with a distress field.

But the wells are 10 to 15 miles from the general location of all the earthquakes, and the water pressure is fairly low, so Holland has pretty much ruled them out.

Austin Holland  

8:49:34    S-401   C0002

The salt water disposal wells that are in the area as a part of oil activity are further away than we would expect to see if they were to trigger these earthquakes.

Austin Holland  

9:01:48    S-401   C0002  (Important Bite)

So it appears, now we are still working on this, it appears that most of the earthquakes that are appearing in the Jones area are occurring in the 4 to 6 km depth range. Most of the epicenters are just south of Jones about a mile or two. So in between Choctaw and Jones.

Austin Holland  

9:02:29    S-401   C0002  (Important Bite)

So by definition these earthquakes are occurring on faults. Earthquakes occur on faults so we are starting to get a picture of the seismicity. There is a hint of a linear structure that runs south of Jones and roughly east-west.

It’s not a big fault, but it is a fault. And no one ever suspected it was there. Holland does not believe it is capable of producing “The Big One,” a magnitude 5.5, but he won’t rule out a 4.2

Police Chief Thomas Pletcher  

10:05:35    S-520    C0009

A lot of the elderly women would call in, and was there anything we could do about them, or help out with them. You know we just kind of like comfort them let them know that everything is ok. It is just an earthquake.

Police Chief Thomas Pletcher  

10:03:13    S-520    C0009

We patrol a lot more after one happens we look around and see if anything structurally is hurt.

Two miles southeast of Jones, just about where Holland puts the fault, David Lapham has some minor damage to his home.

David Lapham  

10:44:10   S-105    C0029

This counter at times will actually pull out a good 1/8th of an inch moved out where you can actually see the caulk line, where it was versus where it is now. It's about 1/8th of an inch movement where it is now. And this door will stick up here at the top at times, and I've already re-done it once but it will, you have to push down on it to get it to open. And none of that ever happened until after the earthquakes started.

David Lapham  

10:46:05   S-105    C0029

I fixed the latch, and now sometimes you have to either push down or lift up in order to get it to latch and now you have to do it to get it to open. So, and there again, none of that ever happened until the tremors started.

David Lapham  

9:53:08   S-105    C0002

I was sitting in my truck one day, right over there, heard the boom, and the truck jumped up and down like that. It never did shake me up much, it just, I knew they were little earth tremors.

David Lapham  

9:56:37   S-105    C0002

It shook us pretty good. That bothered me because the house popped and cracked.

Right now researchers don’t have a good map to work with, but with the new data coming in they are making one.

Shannon Williams  

13:45:16    S-404   C0082

Well Austin from the Oklahoma geological survey came in and was looking for an intern for the summer to create an interactive map of earthquakes going on in Oklahoma right now.

Shannon Williams  

13:45:32    S-404   C0082

Our goal is to take the data from the different areas they are surveying in Oklahoma and create one interactive map that people can get online look at where earthquakes are happening.

Near downtown John Elerick thought there might be a pattern, so he started making his own map.

John Elerick

12:56:24 S-520     C0018

I use the USGS website they have got a feature where you can watch all of the earthquakes from around the world. When Oklahoma shows up it stands out. I just started grabbing the information and they show latitude and longitude to 2 or 3 decimal places. And the exact second which it happened. I just started putting down pins on Google maps and putting the information along side of it.

John Elerick

12:55:13   S-520     C0018

So I started kind of mapping them and trying to see maybe in a simple guys logic you can map out the fault line if you mapped out the earthquakes and they form some kind of pattern Which you know maybe they did maybe they didn’t. You try to you know start coming up with your own conclusions. You know so I started mapping them out to see if I could see any thing and about the only thing I saw was I lived right in the center of all of them.

John Elerick  

12:45:49   S-520     C0018

I remember my brother calling me saying did you feel that earthquake that was big. I said yeah, I am looking at it online at the time. The USGS website it is plotting it 50 ft. outside my front door. And he lives a few miles away. I was like I think that was under my house. I said it was pretty big, he said no it was really big.

John Elerick  

13:32:24   S-520     C0034

Just on the other side of this yellow barricade here. Just back to back to back we had about five or six earthquakes. Just about fifty feet outside my front door. And I think the next day I went out to that parking lot looking for any new cracks or anything. But I didn't see nothing. No damage anywhere.

It’s funny what you can get used to, after the initial shock the people here are taking it all in stride.

Mayor Ray Poland  

9:11:12    S-402   C0020

So far the attitude has been very light hearted. Very few people panicking about it.

Mayor Ray Poland

9:09:15    S-402   C0020

Most of it is pretty light hearted, it's "I can't believe we're having earthquakes in Jones." "What's next? Fires, storms, tornadoes?" things like that..."Now we're starting to have earthquakes?"

“Rooster Bill”  

14:28:41    S-500   C0039

Yeah pretty much, around here it just kind of rolls off your back. Like water off a duck you know. One day it will be the conversation the next it will be the fastest horse in town.

John McEwen  

12:04:39    S-402    C0046

I was filling out my farm tax and I had to apply for a tax free and I was down at city hall and I was signing in to fill that out and a couple of ladies from the Tax Commission were there and we had a nice one. And they screamed. And I said “Aww, it’s just an earthquake.” And they said JUST an earthquake!

Danielle Williams

8:32:02   S-402   C016

At first it was, what was that, and now it is, oh it is just an earthquake. It is an earthquake again a normal everyday thing. We have shirts that say rocking the earthquake now.

Ruthanna Cagle  

13:28:42    S-401   C0001

Not long ago my sister in law that I walk with out here, we kinda have a walking club. She brought me a T-shirt "Shakin things up in Jones, Oklahoma." And it has earthquakes on the back and it's from Gypsy Haven.

Ruthanna Cagle

13:29:29    S-401   C0001

And the central, or the elementary school and made up some shirts. 'Jones Rocks'. And these were sold, lots and lots of these shirts were sold probably about six months before the earthquakes started.

Life here is pretty laid back, it always has been. But now it comes with the occasional unexpected jolt.

Ruthanna Cagle  

13:16:45   S-401   C0001

So my husband and I were upstairs. We were in bed watching a television show and there is just this crash that sounded exactly like a huge truck ran through the bottom of our house. And I thought that's exactly, I thought somebody's run through our wall.

Ruthanna Cagle  

13:17:05   S-401   C0001

So we both jump up and we run downstairs and we're looking all over the place and nothing's there. And after a few minutes, my husband goes you know, I think that may have been an earthquake.

Ruthanna Cagle  

13:17:33   S-401   C0001

So then the phones started ringing and people out here started calling and they go 'did you feel that'? And we were going wow maybe it was.

Ruthanna

13:17:42 S-401   C0001

So we turned on the news, got some information. 

(News 9 Story)

Mayor Ray Poland

9:09:45    S-402   C0020

I called my insurance company, Farm Bureau and they said they would get someone out there as soon as they could. And when I asked them "How many people in Jones had called them?" And they said "Pretty much all of Jones."

Mayor Ray Poland

9:11:21    S-402   C0020

The insurance for mine was an additional 27-dollars a year with a 1,800-dollar deductable. So really based on that I didn't think that was terrible.

David Lapham

10:00:04   S-105    C0002

Oh, it ranges from no big deal to we're going to have a big one that's going to tear everything up. It kind of goes back and forth according to personality and who they've been listening to, and what their own personal outlook is.

David Lapham  

9:58:20   S-105    C0002

You know, what are you going to do about it? It's either going to do it or it's not, and there's certainly nothing you can do to change it. So you just wait and hope and pray nothing happens.

Many here expect the quakes to go as mysteriously as they began leaving the behind a trial of data and a lot of stories for the grandkids about the year that their town felt like it was going to fall off the map.

Danielle Williams /

8:32:35   S-402    C016

I don't need proof to say I felt one. I felt an earthquake in Jones in the middle of America.

John Elerick  

13:10:17   S-520     C0018

I don't maybe it makes your home a little bit more special. A little bit more unusual. Something nobody else can claim.

TRT

BOOTH

WHILE THE POSSIBILITY OF A MAJOR EARTHQUAKE IN OKLAHOMA IS REMOTE, IT REMAINS A POSSIBILITY.  THE FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY SUGGESTS THOSE INSIDE DURING AN EARTHQUAKE STAY INDOORS AND TAKE COVER UNDER A SOLID PIECE OF FURNITURE.  DOORWAYS SHOULD BE USED AS COVER ONLY IF THEY’RE KNOWN TO BE STRONGLY SUPPORTED.

THOSE OUTSIDE SHOULD STAY IN THE OPEN, AWAY FROM BUILDINGS, STREETLIGHTS, AND UTILITY WIRES.

DRIVERS OF VEHICLES SHOULD STOP AS SOON AS SAFELY POSSIBLE, AWAY FROM BUILDINGS, TREES, OVERPASSES, AND POWER LINES.

MOST INJURIES, SAYS FEMA, ARE CAUSED BY WHAT’S FALLING, NOT WHAT’S SHAKIN’.