On shaky ground: One small neighborhood, two days, six earthquakes
East Wichita was shaken by two more earthquakes Monday morning, bringing the total number of temblors since Sunday to six.
Five of the six have occurred in a square bounded by 13th Street on the south, 21st Street on the north, Rock Road on the west and Webb Road on the east. The sixth was just outside that square, slightly west of Rock near Eastview Park.
Residents of the neighborhood said damage has been light to imperceptible.
“So far, I’ve seen just a couple small cracks on a doorway,” said John Gilliam, pausing while taking a walk on Gatewood Street north of 13th.
He moved to his townhome in the upscale neighborhood in August and said he first noticed the ground shaking around Thanksgiving.
Back then, he said, few knew what it was.
”My kids thought something hit the house,” he said chuckling.
He said teenage neighbors called the police because they thought some kind of explosion had gone off someplace nearby.
Another neighborhood resident, Nalini Bharati, said she had a few items tumble out of her china cabinet Sunday, but nothing broken and no harm done.
But she said she wishes someone could explain what’s going on. “I don’t know why we’re having so many of them,” she said.
The latest two quakes came in rapid succession — at 8:52 a.m. and 8:59 a.m. Monday.
The estimated magnitude of the first one was 3.1, followed by a 3.2 shake seven minutes later.
The biggest quake in the past couple days was a 3.9 magnitude shaker at 6:08 p.m. on Sunday.
That was enough to rattle dishes throughout Wichita and was reported being felt as far away as Great Bend., according to United States Geological Survey mapping data.
USGS seismologist Paul Earle said the cause of the quake cluster is unknown at this point, but the agency is doing further research.
The two main possibilities are a naturally occurring seismic event — rare but not unheard-of in Kansas — or a human-caused event linked to the underground disposal of oil-field wastewater in southern Kansas.
While there are no injection wells in the immediate area, cases have been documented of oil-field waste disposal altering pressure in rock formations deep underground and causing quakes dozens of miles away, Earle said.
He said it’s unlikely that Wichita will face a major earthquake, but he urged people to keep their disaster-emergency supplies of food and water stocked on the outside chance of a more disruptive event.
This story was originally published March 15, 2021 at 10:58 AM.
