Earthquakes hit Grand Prairie, Irving area
Professor Brian Stump of the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences in SMU's Dedman College talks about an earthquake that struck southwest of Dallas on Oct. 30-31, 2008.
By Jeffrey Weiss and Arlinda Arriaga
The Dallas Morning News
North Texans have a standard list of potential natural disasters: tornadoes, flash floods, even the occasional ice storm. But earthquakes? Isn't that a California thing?
Well, no, as some people who felt the ground shake late Thursday and Friday can attest. At least six small quakes centered between Dallas and Fort Worth alarmed some residents, but no damage or injuries were reported. . .
The first few quakes were probably more noticeable because they happened late at night, said Bryan Stump, a geology professor at Southern Methodist University.
"At midnight, that's when I'm quiet and maybe reading my book, and it's the time I'm most likely to notice a quiet event," he said.
Dr. Stump's students got a chance to read data from the school's earthquake detectors Friday morning. And their professor got to drop some local news into his class, an introduction to geology focusing on earthquakes and volcanoes.
"We started right out with it," he said.
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