Whole lotta quakin'
Text 
No Comments [ Add Comment ]By JORDAN MUHLESTEIN
Standard-Examiner staff
Ogden trucker todded by Nevada temblor
WELLS, Nev. -- Billy Martin woke up Thursday morning when his semi-trailer started rocking and threw him out of bed.
He sleepily scrambled up and poked his head out of the sleeper section into the cab of his truck, which he had parked at the Flying J Travel Plaza to sleep Wednesday night.
"I didn't know what was going on," the 40-year-old Ogden resident said. "I thought somebody might have been stealing my truck, but no one was in the cab. I looked out and saw all the other trucks shaking around me."
Realizing it was an earthquake, Martin woke up his 15-year-old daughter, who was riding with him, and the pair waited for the shaking to die down.
The magnitude 6.0 earthquake, with an epicenter about 11 miles from Wells, struck at 7:16 a.m. Mountain Standard Time, said Tony Lowry, assistant professor of geophysics at Utah State University. The quake was originally reported as magnitude 6.3, but was downgraded after analysts looked over the data.
Martin said he went into the truck stop once the ground stopped shaking, but a woman employee told him they had to evacuate the area because of a gas leak in the store. He was feeling aftershocks at this time, as well.
"It was kind of scary," he said. "We heard on the CB and the radio that all kinds of emergency vehicles were on their way, and that some of the buildings downtown had collapsed."
Police officers arrived and began roping off fuel tanks and the store, he said, as well as telling the truck drivers to move one.
"I've never seen a truck stop clear out so fast," Martin said.
He said he and his daughter were able to drive safely to Salt Lake City, where he dropped off his shaken, but not damaged, load.
Lowry said the quake was along a "normal" fault, similar to the Wasatch Fault which runs along, and created, the Wasatch Mountains.
Several smaller quakes, or aftershocks, followed the original large quake, he said.
Lowry said the Wells earthquake was far enough away from the Wasatch Fault that it is unlikely it will affect it.
"The stress change of the fault would die off after 25 to 30 miles," he said, "even though the waves were felt farther out."
Reports collected by the U.S. Geological Survey Web site showed the quake was felt as far away as Oregon and Southern California.
People throughout the Top of Utah also felt the quake, including Patsy Creager, 69, of Garland.
"I was sitting on our couch, which faces north, and I felt movement to the east and west," she said.
Creager said that while her home shook, nothing fell or was damaged.
"I guess we don't live on as stable ground as we think," she said, adding that she was glad the quake was over. "I'd rather not swing and sway any more."
Lowry said the most recent earthquake of magnitude 6.0 in the area was in the Pocatello Valley of Idaho in 1975.
He classified Thursday's quake as moderate-to-large.
"It is not the largest you might expect out of the this region of the world," Lowry said. "This kind of quake should happen about once every decade."
Add Your Comment
