Strongest earthquake yet shakes Guy

LITTLE ROCK — The strongest earthquake yet in a series of dozens of temblors in Faulkner County was felt near Guy early Friday morning.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the 4.4-magnitude quake had an epicenter about 3 miles south-southeast of the small Faulkner County town when it shook the area around 5:20 a.m.

The magnitude number is preliminary, but if it stands, Friday's quake would be the second strongest in the area ever, said Scott Ausbrooks, the geo-hazards and environmental geology supervisor for the Arkansas Geological Survey. There were no preliminary reports of damage or injuries.

Fifty people in Greenbrier, Quitman and Conway reported online feeling a weak shaking within about the first hour after the quake. One person in Oklahoma City reported feeling it.

Michelle Cullifer, a dispatcher in nearby Greenbrier, was working at the police station during a 3.5-magnitude quake early Thursday and then again during the 4.4 one Friday. The former just shook the roof.

"This one was a lot worse," she said. "I could actually feel the ground moving. We have concrete floors and you could feel the ground shaking really good. It was enough to definitely scare me."

The shaking lasted five seconds, Cullifer said, adding more than a dozen residents called in to see what was going on in the minutes after it happened.

Danny Lewis, general manager of the McDonald's on Broadview Street in Greenbrier, said the earthquake was the main topic of conversation among employees and customers Friday morning.

Lewis said he had just woken up and was "still groggy" when the walls started shaking at his home. It wasn't strong enough to knock anything off shelves and the windows stayed strong despite sounding as if they were going to break.

"I was laying there in bed and everything just starts going crazy for a few seconds," he said. "Then it's over and done with."

Cullifer called the mass number of small quakes worrisome.

"It absolutely concerns me," she said. "It just kind of makes me think all these little ones have gotta be leading up to something more."

It's likely there will be more, but probably nothing of disastrous or even damaging proportion, geologists say.

Ausbrooks - who lives near Greenbrier and was awakened by the shaking - said the latest swarm of quakes in the area closely mirrors activity in Enola in 1982, when the temblors started small, registered a 4.5 a couple weeks later and continued with more than 1,000 mostly very minor aftershocks. It reactivated in 2001 with a 4.4-magnitude quake and 2,500 smaller aftershocks.

So history suggests the area is in for more rattling.

"I would expect this activity to continue for week to months," Ausbrooks said. It's unlikely anything will reach more than a 5.0-magnitude, but there probably will be lots of very small quakes. "This is a very seismically active area," Ausbrooks said

Some people didn't feel Friday's quake at all. An employee at Daylight Donuts in Greenbrier said she didn't notice any shaking and a clerk at Colt's Quick Draw convenience store said it occurred while she was home asleep and it didn't wake her.

More than 40 minor earthquakes were felt in the region last week and there have been dozens more in the months prior.

Geologists have installed temporary sensors in the area as they investigate what may have caused them. Officials have cast doubt on - but not ruled out - a possible link to natural gas drilling in the area.

Ausbrooks noted there are many wells operating without any earthquake activity around them, but he said geologists are investigating saltwater disposal wells in particular as a possible contributor. Seismic activity has been linked to such wells in other locations, but in others they operate without any seismic activity around them.

Ausbrooks enjoys investigating quakes, but he said he doesn't take the job lightly.

"People don't like the ground to move under their feet," he said. "And I don't blame them."