Earthquake today

A pair of recent strong earthquakes were part of a surge in seismic activity in the state related to oil and gas production.

He had been in a staff meeting on the second floor of the city hall — a building Mr. In the meantime, each tremor has become a topic of conversation. “Most of the staff were a little shaken and were, like, what do we do?” he said. At the same time, storing additional wastewater — with its volatile mix of chemicals — above ground in order to avoid injecting too much into the earth has created a new hazard, Mr. He said he had been at home in Pecos with his wife and 2-year-old child at the time of the November earthquake. Each of the past few years, about 168 billion gallons of wastewater have been disposed of in this way, according to data from the Railroad Commission of Texas, which regulates the oil industry. Some of that wastewater is reused in fracking operations, but most of it is injected back under the ground. “If you have to have the ground shaking every two or three months to make sure you have a good paycheck coming in every month, you’re not going to think twice about it.” Briers likened it to the artillery he felt while serving in the military in Afghanistan. The county’s official population of 14,000 does not account for thousands of mostly male transient workers staying in austere “man camps” and R.V. So unheard of were strong earthquakes in the flat, oil-rich expanse about a six-hour drive west of Austin that some residents at first mistook the November quake for a powerful gust of wind. The earthquakes, arriving in close succession, were the latest in what has been several years of surging seismic activity in Texas, a state known for many types of natural disasters but not typically, until now, for major earth movements.