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Indiana's wake-up call

Posted by kim carpenter on April 19, 2008
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Earthquake was strongest to hit area in 40 years

By Tim Evans and Erin Dostal

The 5.2-magnitude earthquake that rattled windows and nerves across Indiana on Friday was not an anomaly, experts said, and even larger quakes are likely to rock the state in the future.

That’s because Indiana sits near the New Madrid seismic zone, which generated the largest quake ever recorded in the continental U.S., and on top of a smaller fault that runs along the Wabash River valley.

Friday’s was the strongest quake to strike the area in 40 years.

It is impossible to say when or where the next quake will hit Indiana, or what the magnitude might be, said

Scott Wilkerson, chairman of the geosciences department at DePauw University in Greencastle.

“Predicting earthquakes in the future is a dicey game, at best,” he said. “But I would expect to see this kind of earthquake probably in the next 10 to 20 years, maybe longer, with smaller quakes from time to time. It is something that is going to continue.”

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