“Our cat started acting weird”
EMILY KALKA and MIKE McCORMICK
Staff writers
For most people in Lincoln County, it started with a rumble.
- “You can always hear it coming when they happen. At first just the normal rumble, but then it intensified as it hit the living room and began to shake everything,” said Stroud teacher Beth Young.
- “Our cat started acting weird and the dogs started barking. A few moments later, we heard a rumble and felt a big whoosh of force move from the right side of the room to the left, and then the quaking started,” said Lacey Knight, who lives in Harrah.
- “When it first hit, it started as a low rumble. I thought the cats were just stampeding like normal,” said Chandler resident Cheyenne Smedley.
Oklahoma - specifically Lincoln County - was jolted around 11:24 p.m. on Friday night when a 5.1-magnitude earthquake struck. It was followed by nearly 50 aftershocks as of Monday morning, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The epicenter was roughly five miles north of Prague; however, there are reports of people as far away as Missouri, Kansas, Northwest Arkansas and even northern Texas feeling it.
Newly appointed Lincoln County Emergency Management Director Charlotte Brown said there were no injuries or damage to report.
“I’m thankful for the way it turned out. It was a great outcome,” she said.
The earthquake was 5.1 miles northwest of Prague. After the quake, the Oklahoma Corporation Commission issued a directive instruction owners of wastewater disposal wells within 10 miles of the epicenter to begin reducing amounts of wastewater injected and to cease completely by Feb. 17.
Brown said she was in touch with Prague City Manager Jim Greff and that the infrastructure of the Prague dam was checked and there was no damage.
“I periodically checked with the Lincoln County 911 Center to see if any damage or injuries were being reported,” she added.
“I live in Stroud and things fell off my buffet and my wall,” she said. “I checked on my kids, I have four at home and one in the Navy, all was good, then I explained to them there could be aftershocks. Everyone was fine.”
She said people with damage they haven’t reported may call the Lincoln County Emergency Management Office or go to its website.
Longtime Prague area resident Louis Devereaux and his wife, Lisa, live about two miles from the epicenter of the quake, he said.
“It shook us real good,” he said. “We have some friends who live practically right on top of it. It scared them and turned over three book cases,” Devereaux noted.
Smedley said after the initial rumble, her house which is a two-story built into the side of a hill started moving. Hard.
“I joke about being stuck in bed like a turtle, but it really was like that. Everything was shaking back and forth with such a force that I couldn’t get any sense of balance to move at all,” she said. “I had one arm out like a bull rider and the other fumbling to grab my lamp before it fell, and just had to wait for everything to She didn’t report any damage, though Young, who lives four miles north of the epicenter, said the quake knocked items off shelves and walls. It also cracked the sheetrock wall in one bedroom and worsened a crack they got from the last big earthquake to hit in 2011. That quake also hit near Prague, but was magnitude 5.7.
“My son was panicking and figurines on my mantle began falling and breaking. Pictures on my shelves fell over. Pictures on the walls turned and fell. Little things all over the house. My shower was covered in soap; the bottles fell and broke,” Young said.
Jennifer O’Donnell, who lives in Agra, said the quake caused a crack in her ceiling.
“Our whole house shook for a good minute. Our house is less than a year old, and this one shook our house,” she said.
Taryn Gibson, another Chandler resident, said it felt like her house was going to come down, though admits she was being slightly dramatic.
“I could feel the shaking hard from side to side, and it lasted what felt like forever,” she said. “My husband kept telling me to just calm down. We were awake, binge-watching a show on Netflix. I’m surprised (about) the ones who slept through it.”