Quakes Caused Damage at Enid

Two earthquakes, each measuring 4.2 magnitude struck near Enid on Sunday causing some damage and were strong enough to be felt in Wichita, Kansas. The US Geological Survey indicated they were the strongest earthquakes to be recorded this year in Oklahoma.

“It sounded like an explosion,” Brandi Davidson told the Enid News and Eagle. She and her husband just moved into the new home two weeks ago in Breckinridge, a small town at the very northeast side of the city of Enid.

“I knew it was at our back door. I knew it was close. It rattled our feet on the ground,” she added, explaining that items fell from the walls.

But the home suffered extensive damage including what Garfield County Emergency Management Director Mike Honigsberg described as “major brick separation” from doors and windows.

 

 

He said there were also structural issues with the home and cracked sheetrock  above doors and windows. Some stairstep cracking was reported in some areas of the brick.

“I haven’t had to deal with earthquake damage like this before,” he said, after he had been at the scene. “This will be more of an insurance issue than anything else.”

Others told the newspaper they felt the quake and one man described it was a wave that moved through his home.

Mike Thorp in Garber said, “In Garber, moved through like a wave and hit hard enough to creek the walls and rattle the windows. You could also hear it as it moved away.”

Another resident who lives north of Enid said she could hear it coming before it hit.

The quakes and two smaller ones that occurred early Monday morning have the attention of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission which recently revised its seismicity protocol for oil and natural gas drilling in the STACK. It is the region primarily made up of Canadian, Kingfisher and Blaine counties, an area of active drilling to the south of Enid and Garber county.

“Our Induced Seismicity Team is reviewing those operation of those wells, along with the data from the earthquakes, said OCC spokesman Matt Skinner in an  email response to OK Energy Today.

“”We have 4 active Arbuckle disposal wells in the area, which is part of the 15,000 square mile AOI, where limits have been put into place (a general 40 percent reduction in 2016, and various localized shut-ins and reductions since then),” he added.

It was nearly ten days ago when the Corporation Commission’s Oil and Gas Division revised the protocol for the SCOOP and STACK. But Skinner said the protocol applies only to the hydraulic fracturing operations in the two big oil plays, “very different from what’s happening in Enid.”

“So no, we are not considering redoing the protocol—it’s addressing something completely different.”