Estimated 3.0-magnitude earthquake rattles Wichita. More minor quakes are expected.
An earthquake that rattled the Wichita-area Tuesday morning left some residents saying it was among the most-unusual they’ve experienced.
The United States Geological Survey reported the estimated 3.0-magnitude quake struck in east Wichita around three kilometers — or 1.86 miles — northeast of Eastborough at 10:54 a.m. Its epicenter was five kilometers, or about 3.1 miles, underground, according to www.earthquake.usgs.gov — right beneath east Wichita’s Bradley Fair Shopping Center.
The earthquake is the fourth with a 2.0 or greater magnitude in Wichita over the past two weeks, according to the Kansas Geological Survey. Earthquakes with reported magnitudes ranging from 2.4 to 2.7 on the Richter scale occurred on Thanksgiving, Nov. 27 and Nov. 30.
All had epicenters concentrated in east Wichita, near 13th and Greenwich, according to a KGS map.
The KGS lists the strength of Tuesday’s quake a little higher than the USGS — as a 3.3 magnitude, which ties it for the state’s fifth-strongest earthquake of the year.
Social media reports indicated the earthquake could be felt across Wichita, including around Douglas and Hillside and down south near 31st and Seneca. The USGS’s Community Internet Intensity Map shows people in Derby and in the El Dorado area also felt weak to light shaking.
Residents who posted on Twitter about the earthquake described it as strong but quick and “probably the closest one” they’ve ever felt.
One person described it as the “oddest sounding” quake they’ve heard, like a vehicle had hit a house or something had exploded.
“Definitely felt that earthquake in downtown Wichita! The whole building was shaking,” another Twitter user wrote.
Will Parcell, chair of Wichita State University’s geology department, said the sound and feel of an earthquake is closely tied to a person’s proximity to its epicenter and the type of earth its seismic waves pass through.
The quick, sharp “boom” many reported hearing Tuesday is likely the result of those waves traveling through dense, firm material like rock, he said.
“It will travel quickly through that and then you’ll get the feeling of a car hitting the house,” Parcell said.
Although the USGS says damage typically doesn’t occur with minor earthquakes, Parcell said Tuesday’s might have been strong enough to cause light cracks in the plaster walls of older buildings.
Parcell said it’s hard to say with absolute certainty what’s caused the recent earthquakes in Wichita.
But he said the culprit could be hydraulic fracturing, or fracking — a process used to extract natural gas or oil from deep within the earth’s bedrock.
“The disposal water from the fracking process puts weight on the crust and faults beneath Wichita and south-central Kansas, and as that water is injected and then that water moves out from where it was injected from, it puts pressure on those faults ... that they haven’t experienced before,” Parcell said.
The result is often an earthquake.
Parcell said he isn’t aware of any injection wells in east Wichita. But studies have shown fracking operations can induce earthquakes miles away, he said.
“It is odd that they’re all occurring right around the same area right now.”
He added that Wichita is also just west of a “major fault system” known as the Nemaha Ridge or the Humboldt Fault that runs through the center of North America.
Parcell said Wichita-area residents might feel more earthquakes in the coming days.
But he doesn’t expect anything “too bad.”
“They usually come with little aftershocks, or they set off another one,” he said. “It may be a few more weeks of this.”
This story was originally published December 8, 2020 at 11:15 AM.
