Tennessee earthquakes are more common than many people think.
That according to Tennessee Tech Associate Professor of Civil Engineering Tim Huff after the 4.1 magnitude earthquake centered near Greenback Saturday.
“You’ve got the East Tennessee Seismic Zone on that part of the state,” Huff said. “Then, of course, in the west, out by the Mississippi River, we’ve got the New Madrid seismic zone. And those are two of the most seismically active regions in the United States. It’s just that most of the earthquakes that happen are quite small.”
Huff said most earthquakes happen where the earth’s tectonic plates meet. These two seismic zones are not on a plate boundary, rather in a crack in a plate called a fault line.
Still, Huff said these two seismic zones could produce a major earthquake. Huff said if that happen, the Upper Cumberland would still feel something. However, Huff said it would not be as strong because we are so far away from both areas.
Huff said we are basically in the middle of two earthquake areas.
“A place like Knoxville, a place like Memphis, and a place like Cookeville would experience very different ground shaking if a big one happened in one of those places,” Huff said. “Cookeville, for example, would probably be on the order of 20 percent less of what Memphis might feel.”
Huff said a quake as high as a 6.1 could happen in East Tennessee and in West Tennessee. Huff said that size of a quake would produce serious damage and be felt in the Upper Cumberland.
“That may not sound like it is much more than a 4.1, but it is actually a whole lot more,” Huff said. “If you go up on the magnitude scale, that’s an increase in 32 times s much energy. So, if you go from a 4.1 to a 6.1, that’s about a thousand times as much energy as the 6.1 compared to the 4.1”
Greenback is about 30 miles from Knoxville.
