North Texas has higher than ever risk for earthquakes, new report says
The Dallas - Fort Worth area has a higher than ever risk for earthquakes, according to a new U.S. Geological Survey report. But scientists still have no definitive answers about why.
Researchers looked at hazards from man-made sources like fracking, instead of just natural earthquake hazards. North Texas had virtually no quakes until 2008. Since then, the area has had more than 200.
Scientists are working on more ways to determine which quakes are influenced by humans.
"The Rocky Mountain arsenal earthquakes, we saw, the seismicity stopped,” explained Justin Rubinstein with the U.S. Geological Survey. “And that’s one very clear way we have to determine that earthquakes are induced, but there really is no silver bullet that we have to really distinguish between them.”
The report said there's a less than 1 percent chance of a quake that's a magnitude 4.8 or higher, but that such a quake could cause billions in damage.