Rick Stonell: on the New Madrid Earthquake
THE NEW MADRID EARTHQUAKE OF 1812
It’s not just the East Coast that has to worry about earthquakes.
At the end of 1811 and the beginning of 1812, 3 earthquakes occurred near New Madrid, MO. These are among the biggest earthquakes of modern times, and actually produced major changes in topography. Lakes dried up, forests were destroyed, a huge lake was created, the Mississippi changed its course - and at one point actually ran backwards.
Physical and documentary evidence allows us to estimate that these quakes were magnitude 8.0 (or higher) on the Richter Scale. They were felt over the entire United States.
Buildings at New Madrid were destroyed. “Houses, gardens, and fields were swallowed up” one source notes. Fortunately, fatalities were low - there were few people living there. The situation would be very different today.
The thing to remember is that the 1811-1812 earthquake was merely a continuation in a series which included rumblings in 1699, 1776, 1779, 1792, 1795, and 1804. These predecessor quakes were quite possibly even stronger; and some of the changes later credited to the New Madrid Quake possibly came earlier.
If another quake of the magnitude of the New Madrid Quake of 1811 should hit the region, it would be the worst natural disaster in American history. Especially vulnerable are buildings of brick and concrete. Almost all of downtown Memphis would fall. The highways and interstate systems would be shattered and bridges destroyed. Massive gas line ruptures would threaten life and property. If the Mississippi River were already near flood stage, the destruction of levees could result in the flooding of perhaps a quarter of the state of Arkansas. Overall the loss of life could run into the hundreds of thousands.
EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS
JOHN BRADBURY: On December 15, 1811, John Bradbury, a Scottish naturalist, was headed down the Mississippi River with a party of boatmen. They were tied up for the night just upstream from the Chicksaw Bluffs (the future Memphis) and Bradbury was fast asleep when “a most tremendous noise” panicked the group. “All nature seemed running into chaos,” he later wrote, “as wild fowl fled, trees snapped and river banks tumbled into the water.” Bradbury recoreded twenty-seven shocks.
Note: The event was called the New Madrid Earthquake, because New Madrid (Missouri) was the closest settlement. The quake actually began along the Saint Francis River in Arkansas (sixty-five miles southwest of New Madrid). Bradbury was closer to the epicenter than the residents of the town of New Madrid who were woken by shaking houses and falling chimneys.
George Heinrich Crist, a resident of he north-central Kentucky county of Nelson, near the present location of Louisville. December 1611
“There was a great shaking of the earth this morning. Tables and chairs turned over and knocked around - all of us knocked out of bed. The roar I thught would leave us deaf if we lived. It was not a storm. when you could hear, all you cold hear was screams from people and animals. It was the worst thing that I have ever wittnesed. It was still dark and you could not see nothng. I thought the shaking and the loud roaring sound would never stop. You could not hold onto nothing neither man or woman was strong enough - the shaking would knock you lose like knocking hicror nuts out of a tree. I don’t know how we lived through it. None of us was killed - we was all banged up and some of us knocked out for awile and blood was every where. When it got day break you could see the damage done all around. We still had our home it was some damage. Some people that the home was not built to strong did not. We will have to hunt our animals. Every body is scared to death. we still do not know if anybody was killed. I made my mind to one thing. If this earth quake or what ever it was did not happen in the Territory of Indiana then me and my family is moving to Pigeon Roost as soon as I can get things together.