WLVTMon, 14 May 2007 04:16 UTC
Dozens of people in Knox County woke up to some rumbling this morning and investigators are still working to figure out what it was.
Dozens of calls flooded central dispatch at about 1:15am, mostly from two neighborhoods off Northshore Drive in West Knoxville; Admiral's Landing and Northshore Landing.
Many people tell us they woke up to loud rumbling and thought there were animals or prowlers in their basements or attics.
Others thought there was some sort of explosion shaking the ground.
J.R. Andrews lives in Admiral's Landing and says it woke his entire family up and they all ran outside to see what was going on.
"Half of our neighborhood had come outside and there was these constant shakes in the ground, constant thud. It felt like some type of missile attack," he said. "It wasn't an earthquake, I've been through an earthquake."
KUB not reporting any problems in the area and so far, there has been no reports of a possible earthquake.
Comment: Although some residents do not believe the sounds may be related to any seismic activity, the area sits just outside of one of the most active faults in the US - the
New Madrid Fault Zone. A little
history about the area, courtesy of the
USGS (US Geological Survey):
In the winter of 1811-12, the central Mississippi Valley was struck by three of the most powerful earthquakes in U.S. history. Even today, this region has more earthquakes than any other part of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains. Government agencies, universities, and private organizations are working to increase awareness of the earthquake threat and to reduce loss of life and property in future shocks.
The 400 terrified residents in the town of New Madrid (Missouri) were abruptly awakened by violent shaking and a tremendous roar. It was December 16, 1811, and a powerful earthquake had just struck. This was the first of three magnitude-8 earthquakes and thousands of aftershocks to rock the region that winter.
Survivors reported that the earthquakes caused cracks to open in the earth's surface, the ground to roll in visible waves, and large areas of land to sink or rise. The crew of the New Orleans (the first steamboat on the Mississippi, which was on her maiden voyage) reported mooring to an island only to awake in the morning and find that the island had disappeared below the waters of the Mississippi River. Damage was reported as far away as Charleston, South Carolina, and Washington, D.C.
These dramatic accounts clearly show that destructive earthquakes do not happen only in the western United States. In the past 20 years, scientists have learned that strong earthquakes in the central Mississippi Valley are not freak events but have occurred repeatedly in the geologic past. The area of major earthquake activity also has frequent minor shocks and is known as the New Madrid seismic zone.
Earthquakes in the central or eastern United States affect much larger areas than earthquakes of similar magnitude in the western United States. For example, the San Francisco, California, earthquake of 1906 (magnitude 7.8) was felt 350 miles away in the middle of Nevada, whereas the New Madrid earthquake of December 1811 (magnitude 8.0) rang church bells in Boston, Massachusetts, 1,000 miles away. Differences in geology east and west of the Rocky Mountains cause this strong contrast.
Source: http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/prepare/factsheets/NewMadrid/
Here are a couple of articles related to the New Madrid Fault reflecting the severity of a significant seismic event in the area:
[Link] Signs of the Times: Sonic or "Mystery" Booms [/url]