Remember the old egg timers that were hand-wound and sat on the top ledge of the stove? I don't have one now--I use the microwave timer-- but that little white plastic cover with red numbers taught a life lesson. Also remembering that the longer you used the darn thing, the spring got weak and pretty soon it just didn't time like it should. One day, you had enough and you picked it up for the last time and tossed it in the garbage!
It was sometime around my fiftieth birthday that my patience that carried over from decade to decade started getting shorter (kind of like that little egg timer's spring). Then one day, when I was trying to be patient, I decided that I'd had enough and my patience departed both now and forever more. Oh, I still make an effort to be patient, but it is totally on a two-way street now. A very narrow and short two-way street. So how does this fit with the post? I'm getting there. My patience keeps running out.
There has been a swarm of earthquakes very near to the old Texas Stadium site in Irving. Many locals think it is a result of the drilling in the Barnett Shale Field. When everyone was signing their mineral rights away for that oil-mighty buck which is a misnomer, because in this case it's natural gas that is being extracted by the billions and billions of cubit feet, the only concern was why some had already gotten their first royalty check and others were having to wait. Or, worse yet, the amount was not close to what had been promised when the checks did come.
Now, however, the natives are restless because the "big one" might come any day. So, SMU professor Dr. Brian Stump was called in to have his team plant seismology recorders and last night, the Irving City Council got their report. The funny side to this story is that the Texas Railroad Commission, which oversees drilling's had their seismologist say that he was pretty sure that discharge water from the fracking was not causing the earthquakes. The fact of the matter is that it may not be causing the quakes but it sure isn't helping, either. Never-the-less, the [1]Edwards aquifer IS highly permeable.
The most solid evidence, however, occurred on December 16,1811, followed by January 23,1812 and then again on February 7,1812 when a Magnitude 7.5,7.3 and 7.5 respectively quake rang church bells in Boston Massachusetts. Aftershocks on December 16,1811, registered 7.0 followed by 6 in the range of M5.5 to 6.3 in the first two days following. There were hundreds recorded in 1813.
The last 4500 years in geological records in core samples and scarpands indicate a repeatedly produced sequence of quakes in the above mentioned magnitudes. The concern of most recent studies has seemed to cause increased warning concerns that the New Madrid Zone was ripe for activity equal to or greater than the 1811-1812 quakes.
The Ouachita Fault that runs from the Red River southwest to the Rio Grande passing directly between Dallas and Ft. Worth, is the Ouachita Tectonic Front of The Ouachita Orogenic Belt. That is connected to the Cordillera on the west and the Appalachian on the east. Part of the original Ouachita Mountains, of course, are buried. Originally, the mountain range topped out higher than 2800 foot Mt. Magazine in Central Arkansas, being eroded over time. The Ouachita Fold Belt, which is 300 million years old, runs from western Dallas County line to just west of Athens. Further, we are as the crow-flies under 500 miles southwest of the New Madrid and this area is criss-crossed with faults from much earlier geological time.
So, my patience is shortest with those that can stir-up all sorts of garbage on social media but can't follow the updates from the US Geological Survey Earthquake Hazard Program. I'm no seismologist for sure, but I can recognize a mountain range that is most likely still growing on tectonic fronts.
Since this area was under water a few million years ago before the Ouachita folded and re-folded a few times in history, my question is this: is mountain property more valuable that re-claimed ocean front? Will the new mountains still be called Ouachita? And, will the bells in the bell tower at the University of Dallas ( I think they are rung electronically when a hammer strikes the cast bell rather than the clapper) ring like the church bells did in Boston in 1811? I'll be listening for the bells to ring.
 |
| Looking from the former Cowboy's Texas Stadium home toward the bell tower on the campus of the University of Dallas. |
[1] Baker,R.A.,Bush,R.W., and Baker,E.T. Jr.,1994,Geological history and hydrogeologic settling of the Edwards-Trinity aquifer system west-central Texas: U.S. Geological Survey water-resources Investigation Report 94-4039,50p.
