DFW earthquake risk higher, says U.S. Geological Survey report

City of Dallas sent this bulletin at 04/23/2015 04:09 PM CDT

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April 23, 2015                                                   Sana Syed – Public Information Office                                                                         (214) 670-3322                                                                        

DFW earthquake risk higher, says U.S. Geological Survey report

Dallas - A report released today by the U.S. Geological Survey provides new insight into ground shaking from man-made earthquakes. Although the Dallas and Irving earthquakes are too recent to be included, the report notes that North Texas’ earthquake risk has more than tripled since 2008.

“The City of Dallas Office of Emergency Management will continue to evaluate and strengthen our preparedness planning in the event of an earthquake,” said Emergency Management Coordinator Rocky Vaz. “We are also looking at how cities across the country have responded to high earthquake risks to help us determine future emergency policy changes that might be needed in Dallas.”

Although the USGS suggests that only a small fraction of wastewater wells have been shown to directly cause earthquakes, the study attributes the increased seismic activity in Texas and seven other states on the disposal of wastewater from energy production into deep wells.

“This new report describes for the first time how injection-induced earthquakes can be incorporated into U.S. seismic hazard maps,” said Mark Petersen, Chief of the USGS National Seismic Hazard Modeling Project. “These earthquakes are occurring at a higher rate than ever before and pose a much greater risk to people living nearby. The USGS is developing methods that overcome the challenges in assessing seismic hazards in these regions in order to support decisions that help keep communities safe from ground shaking.”

The USGS aims to ultimately be able to calculate how often earthquakes are expected to occur in the next year and how hard the ground will likely shake as a result. This report looked at the central and eastern United States; future research will incorporate data from western states. The USGS plans to issue a final hazard model at the end of the year after preliminary models are examined further.

According to USGS preliminary estimates, North Texas has a 1-in-2,500 chance of suffering a damaging quake in the next year, about the same odds as having a tornado strike your house.