A 4.7-magnitude earthquake rattled Sedona and the Verde Valley around 11 p.m. Sunday night.
The U.S. Geological Survey received more than 1,000 reports of a tremor from people in Sedona, Flagstaff, Cottonwood and as far away as Tuba City, Gallup and Parker. The epicenter was reportedly about 12 miles north of Sedona and about 6.2 miles underground.
The Verde Valley is no stranger to earthquakes. The Northern Arizona Seismic Belt is a thin region of heavy seismic activity that extends from the Utah border as far south as Prescott. Inside the belt, the heaviest activity is north of Williams to the Grand Canyon, north of Flagstaff and the Sycamore Canyon area and magnitude 2 and magnitude 3 earthquakes are detected almost weekly, but most are negligible.
Earthquakes are measured by the degree of ground motion they produce. People can begin to feel earthquakes around magnitude 2.5. Each step up in magnitude is 10 times as strong as the one before — the magnitude 7.1 Fukushima earthquake that hit Japan on April 11, 2011, was 251 times stronger than the Oak Creek Canyon magnitude 4.7 quake, but 3,981 times more energy was released at Fukushima than our local quake.
For those of us who have never felt an earthquake, the sensation was startling. My mother was at Candlestick Park prior to the first game of the 1989 World Series when the 6.9-magnitude Loma Prieta earthquake shook the San Francisco Bay Area. My best friend was on the subway in Sapporo when the Fukushima earthquake hit northern Japan. While I had heard both of their stories about the sensations and sounds of the tremor, I was entirely unprepared for a quake or even what it was.
My first thoughts were that the javelina herd that I had just chased out of my compost 30 minutes earlier had returned in greater numbers, then maybe a low-flying helicopter, then a large truck had struck my house, but when I heard no rustling leaves nor engine noises after the quake, I was entirely unsure what had just happened.
Then my phone blew up with calls and text messages from friends all around Northern Arizona asking if I too had just felt an earthquake.
We posted USGS data on our website and Facebook page within 20 minutes and asked residents for their comments about what they felt, heard and witnessed. Californian refugees compared the quake to larger ones they had felt while those of us raised in Arizona described our first experiences with a temblor.
Homes in Oak Creek Canyon reportedly shook pictures off the wall while rocks tumbled onto State Route 89A.
We encourage our readers to add their comments to our Facebook page and website. What did you feel, hear and experience? How does this compare to other earthquakes, large or small? Did you witness any structural damage to your home or property? All in all, it made for an exciting finale to an otherwise slow, post-Thanksgiving weekend.
