Earthquake in Oklahoma rattle nerves, no injuries reported

The magnitude 4.7 earthquake that struck the area early Saturday was the first to rattle the area, but emergency officials said no injuries were reported at area hospitals.

"Nothing is destroyed or anything like that," Prague City Police Department dispatcher Claudie Morton told the Tulsa World after the Saturday morning quakes.

A few hours before dawn Sunday, the latest quake set nerves on edge anew.

At the Prague Community Hospital in the region, registered nurse Jessie Plumb said no injured people had come into the emergency room by Sunday morning. But she said she and other hospital staffers felt the 4.0 magnitude quake before dawn while on the second floor of the building.

"It kind of gave a little bit of a shake, a little bit of rock 'n roll," she told The Associated Press by phone. "I would say it was 20 or 25 seconds." She said she was anxious because of the number of quakes concentrated in her region in so short a span.

Saturday's late-night quake was slightly less in intensity than a temblor that rattled the East Coast on Aug. 23. That 5.8 magnitude earthquake was centered in Virginia and was felt from Georgia to Canada. No major damage was reported, although cracks appeared in the Washington Monument, the National Cathedral suffered costly damage to sculpted stonework, and a number of federal buildings were evacuated.

Turner said the Saturday night quake was Oklahoma's strongest on record.

USGS records show that a 5.5 magnitude earthquake struck El Reno, just west of Oklahoma City, in 1952 and, before Oklahoma became a state in 1907, a quake of similar magnitude 5.5 struck in northeastern Indian Territory in 1882.

She said quakes did start occurring in the region in February 2010 and added the latest activity appears to be part of that trend. She also said the magnitude 4.7 quake early Saturday appeared to be a prelude to Saturday night's more potent quake and Sunday's was an aftershock.

"If these are going to continue to happen, we can't predict," she told AP.

Oklahoma Geological Survey researcher Austin Holland told Oklahoma City television station KOTV that the earthquake and aftershocks occurred on a known fault line.

Residents in Prague and Sparks felt an intense shaking, but for those farther away the quake was more of a dull rumble, he said.

"It shakes much more rapidly when you're closer to it," he said. "Because it's a large earthquake, it's going to rumble for a while."

Morton said the office was flooded with calls, but no one reported any severe injuries or damage. She said residents told her that picture frames and mirrors fell from walls and broke, drawers worked loose from dressers and objects tumbled out of cabinets.

"Oh, man. I've never felt anything like that in my life," Morton told the Tulsa newspaper. "It was the scariest thing. I had a police officer just come in and sit down and all the sudden the walls started shaking and the windows were rattling. It felt like the roof was going to come off the police department."

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