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Monday, October 29, 2012

M3.9 Earthquake in Arkansas,

There was a magnitude 3.9 this morning in Arkansas just west of Memphis and North of Forrest city.
Earthquakes in this region are interesting because even small ones can be felt over long distances and large ones can shake the entire eastern seaboard.

In fact, from Dec 1811 to Feb 1812  THREE magnitude 8 earthquakes hit back to back to back,  each about 1 month apart. These quakes rang church bells in Boston and made the Mississippi river flow backwards for 3 days as it filled the newly created Real Foot Lake in Tennessee.

So when a 3.9 hits we pay attention, and apparently so does the government. Back in 2008 a magnitude 5.1 quake hit Evansville Indiana, we felt is and its aftershock over 200 miles away here in Saint Louis. Fast forward to Januarary 2011 and FEMA was putting out RFI's for just tons of temporary shelters, , blankets body bags, and 140 million of MRE's. The purpose of those RFI's seemed to be to identify potential suppliers should a quake hit the New Madrid fault zone.

The MRE RFI even  resulted in this headline Did FEMA Expect Midwest MegaQuake by 2014? in Science magazine, but for some reason they did not  report the other associated RFI's for shelters, blankets and body bags.  

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