All Shook Up

by Kent Ninomiya

A 5.4 magnitude earthquake shakes the Midwest and you would think the Earth opened up and swallowed it whole. First of all, a 5.4 isn't that big. Yes, you can feel it and it might knock a few books off the shelf, but there were no deaths, injuries or damage of any consequence. That didn't stop local and national media from screaming that the sky was falling. There was wall to wall live coverage and non stop interviews of people saying it woke them up and they felt it. So? There was no video of destruction because there was none. It was an amusing talker, nothing more. The Midwest isn't used to earthquakes so they have every right to take note of that. I even understand the predictable sidebar story about the possibility of the "big one" hitting the New Madrid fault. However, journalists inexperienced in earthquake coverage made themselves look foolish by taking the shaking so seriously. They also tossed around the term "Richter Scale" because they saw it in a movie somewhere. Any reporter or anchor with knowledge of earthquakes knows that seismologists abandoned the Richter Scale decades ago because of its limitations. They developed other methods of measuring magnitude that take different equipment and environmental factors into account. The term "Richter Scale" was made up by reporters in the first place and only tolerated by scientists because reporters continue to use it. Most Midwest reporters were even unaware how Richter works. They don't know that it is a logarithmic scale meaning every full point represents ten times the amplitude and 31 times the release of energy. There was virtually no mention of the moment magnitude scale widely used by seismologists today. Journalists did viewers a great disservice by re enforcing false perceptions about earthquakes. No one died and no one was in danger of dying. The earth shakes all the time, even in the Midwest. It's just that most people don't feel it. The New Madrid fault has produced some of the biggest temblors on record but they are infrequent. People in California laughed at the coverage. They have real earthquakes fairly often. 1989 Loma Prieta quake magnitude 6.9, 1994 Northridge quake magnitude 6.7, 1906 San Francisco quake magnitude 7.8. Out there a 5.4 might be a B-block vosot. I am not condemning Midwest journalists for getting excited over an earthquake. They just should have done their homework when reporting on something they were clearly unfamiliar with. *** Kent Ninomiya ***