11:50a ET: 500 square feet falls into giant sinkhole — Towards pipeline on SW side — Clean up halted
http://www.dailycomet.com/article/20121004/ARTICLES/121009798?p=all&tc=pgall
Mysterious tremors raise questions
Published: Thursday, October 4, 2012 at 9:59 p.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, October 4, 2012 at 9:59 p.m.
Nobody quite knows what caused the ground in some parts of Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes to shake, but it certainly has people talking.
A little before 2 p.m. Wednesday, reports began flooding in to officials of tremors accompanied by a loud noise. The Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office and Office of Emergency Preparedness received reports, but nobody has been able to narrow down a cause.
Lockport resident Bryan Comardelle had just sat down to watch television when he felt the rumble.
“It was just a sudden vibration,” Comardelle said. “I live in a brick house, and it even made it shake.”
Most reports are fairly uniform: one to four tremors reported in the southern reaches of the parishes all the way up into Raceland and Houma. Some people reported hearing a loud noise similar to thunder accompanying the rumbling.
“My wife described it as sounding like a garbage truck had just dropped a dumpster,” Comardelle said.
After the first rumble, Comardelle joined his perplexed neighbors outside looking for the rumbling culprit or any sign of bad weather that could have caused the thunderous noise.
“It was clear outside, and then we felt more tremors,” Comardelle said.
Chris Boudreaux, Lafourche’s director of Emergency Operations, spent Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning making calls to try to narrow down the possible causes.
Boudreaux said the National Guard reported having no fly-overs that could have caused a sonic boom that follows a craft breaking the sound barrier. He also called multiple oil-field facilities, but none had an explanation.
“As far as right now, we haven’t found anything,” Boudreaux said. “I don’t think we will.”
Boudreaux also put a call into the U.S. Geological Survey, which monitors seismic activity. But it had nothing to report, though its closest monitors are in Assumption Parish and extreme west Terrebonne, Boudreaux said.
Paul Caruso, a geophysicist with the Geological Survey’s National Earthquake Center, said there are not many seismic monitors in south Louisiana because there is rarely any such activity in the area. He noted there would have to be several such monitors within 50 miles of such a weak quake’s epicenter to detect it.
Rafael Abreu, another geophysicist with the center, said the earth’s crust is riddled with fault lines, and people often report hearing such a such a loud noise when they are near the epicenter of a quake.
“Of course the sinkhole comes to mind,” said Raceland resident Lauren Matherne, who was sitting in her home with she felt the jolt.
Residents of the Assumption Parish community of Bayou Corne felt light tremors in the months leading up to the emergence of the 400 foot-wide sinkhole in the swamp near the community this past summer.
Scientists believe the sinkhole was caused when a subterranean brine cavern collapsed within the Napoleonville Salt Dome. The floor of the cavern is more than 1,000 feet underground.
Though Lafourche and Terrebonne have similar brine caverns, Boudreaux said there is no reason to believe there are any similarities to the Bayou Corne situation.
“It’s just strange. Of course, we are all concerned about what caused it,” Matherne said.
Quake Activity Update – from Idahopicker
•October 4, 2012 • Leave a CommentLINK – http://youtu.be/Yv73wb_d__I
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