STE. GENEVIEVE – The New Madrid earthquakes were the biggest earthquakes in American history. They occurred in the central Mississippi Valley, but were felt as far away as New York City, Boston, Montreal, and Washington D.C.
Michael Fix, Professor of Geology, will give a special presentation on the New Madrid earthquakes on Saturday, April 15 at 1 p.m. at the Sainte Genevieve Museum Learning Center. His program is being sponsored by Country Mart in Ste. Genevieve.
During his presentation, he’ll give a mix of historical accounts that happened during the earthquakes; and explain explain why earthquakes occur.
Fix said it’s not if we’ll have another earthquake, it’s just a matter of when.
“There’s still a lot of uncertainty regarding the probability of different magnitude levels of the earthquake,” he said. “Most people put the chances of earthquakes like in 1811 and 1812 as quite remote. The re-occurrence of quakes of that size are more on the order of 500-900 years, but lesser earthquakes occur often enough that there’s a much higher probability. With each passing year, the likelihood does seem to be more likely.”
Fix said there’s never been anything like these earthquakes in the United States and almost no where in the world, not so much for how powerful they were, but for the enormous area over which they were felt—two million square miles.
Fix is a regular at the Sainte Genevieve Museum Learning Center working on the bones of the Missouri Dinosaur in the museum’s lab.
The New Madrid Earthquakes speaker presentation will be held on Saturday, April 15 at 1 p.m. the presentation is free to museum members, otherwise admission will apply.