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The first temblor hit at 11:00 p.m. Sunday night, and the quaking continued through the night with three substantial aftershocks.
Just as The King’s Speech took the award for best director during last night’s Oscars, Northern Arkansas was all shook up by a 4.7-magnitude earthquake. The tremor was rooted four miles from the small town of Greenbriar, 40 miles north of Little Rock.
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Following the initial shaking, an aftershock of magnitude 3.8 struck 18 minutes later. And as residents crawled into bed, they would be roused twice more by rumbling – a 3.6-magnitude quake struck just before 3 a.m., and at 7 a.m. this morning, they felt a 3.2-magnitude rumbler. Residents in neighboring states of Oklahoma, Missouri, Tennessee and Mississippi reported feeling the earthquake. But even in Greenbriar, the town closest to the quake, police received no reports of injuries or damage.
“We probably wouldn’t see structural damage until a 5 or 5.5,” Bekki White, Director of the Arkansas Geological Survey explained to KTHV. “What you’re going to see now is pictures sway, things fall off the wall.” She reported it was the strongest quake since 1969.
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“It lasted 4 or 5 seconds, but you knew instantly what it was,” local resident Stephen Dunn told KARK. That’s because the northern Arkansas area is no stranger to temblors. The AP reports that more than 700 quakes, albeit small ones, have occurred in the area over the past 6 months.