Oklahoma earthquake causes damage

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Fourteen homes were damaged late on Saturday in the largest earthquake to hit Oklahoma on record, emergency management officials said on Sunday. The 5.6-magnitude earthquake's epicenter, located 44 miles east of Oklahoma City, was felt as far away as Wisconsin and South Carolina, but there were no serious injuries, officials said. The Oklahoma health department reported two minor injuries, neither requiring hospitalization. The largest earthquake previously recorded in Oklahoma was a 5.5-magnitude tremor in 1952, according to the Geological Survey. The Oklahoma Geological Survey has warned people to expect more aftershocks, said Michelann Ooten, a spokeswoman for the state emergency management department. Saturday's quake rippled north through Kansas and into Missouri, rattling windows and waking sleeping residents, though there were no reports of damage or injuries there.

Fourteen homes were damaged late on Saturday in the largest earthquake to hit Oklahoma on record, emergency management officials said on Sunday.

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The 5.6-magnitude earthquake's epicenter, located 44 miles east of Oklahoma City, was felt as far away as Wisconsin and South Carolina, but there were no serious injuries, officials said. The Oklahoma health department reported two minor injuries, neither requiring hospitalization.

The largest earthquake previously recorded in Oklahoma was a 5.5-magnitude tremor in 1952, according to the Geological Survey.

The Oklahoma Geological Survey has warned people to expect more aftershocks, said Michelann Ooten, a spokeswoman for the state emergency management department.

Saturday's quake rippled north through Kansas and into Missouri, rattling windows and waking sleeping residents, though there were no reports of damage or injuries there.

At one of the homes damaged in Oklahoma, the chimney crashed through the roof and its walls and foundation were split by tremors, said Joey Wakefield, emergency management director for rural Lincoln County.

The severity of the earthquake startled everyone, he said, because earthquakes in the area are typically mild.

"We're in tornado country, man," Wakefield told Reuters. "These earthquakes, it just scares the hell out of everybody here."

The National Weather Service in Norman, Oklahoma, said its radar detected swarms of birds and bugs that took flight to escape the shaking on the ground.

A state highway that buckled in the southeast corner of the county was patched and reopened to traffic by early Sunday while a road grader was sent to push a boulder the size of a sport-utility vehicle off a rural county road, Wakefield said.

In nearby Shawnee, Oklahoma, the earthquake caused a spire to fall from a five-story building on the campus of St. Gregory's University that was built in 1915, a university spokeswoman said.

Map shows the areas where the earthquake was felt.  Credit:  USGS

Article continues: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/07/us-quake-usa-oklahoma-idUSTRE7A50A020111107