Earthquake Confirmed In Dallas-Fort Worth Area
Fort Worth experienced another tremor today. The U.S. Geological Survey confirms a 2.6 magnitude earthquake shook the ground near Burleson, Texas at about 8:23 p.m. Wednesday night. The earthquake reached a depth of 8.1 miles and was located about three miles away from Burleson. No damage was reported. Burleson is a southern suburb of Forth Worth.
In a statement to CBS, officials said that the earthquake is nothing to worry about. Rafael Abreu from the USGS National Earthquake Information Center said:
“This is a very small earthquake, the kind that can definitely happen anywhere in the world.”
North Texas has been experiencing small earthquakes over the course of the past few months. This is the fifth earthquake to occur in the since late September. This one is by far the deepest at 8.1 miles. The last earthquake was a 2.7 tremor on October 16th with a depth of 7.5 miles. Before that one occurred on September 30 followed by two more on October 1 — all in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. There have been 50 earthquakes in a 100-kilometer radius around DFW since October 31, 2008.
Seismologist and SMU professor Brian Stump said that he doesn’t believe fracking or gas drilling are behind the recent earthquakes in North Texas.
In a statement to NBC, Stump said:
“In [the] central part of the United States, where we’re not in a big plate boundary, there are faults. Those faults … relieve stress occasionally and I think that’s what happened. For one thing it may a sequence of natural events or be related to human activity. We still need to study to quantify the relationship.
