Seismologist Say El Paso Could See Magnitude 7 Earthquake

EL PASO, Texas -- Wood house are very flexible in an earthquake... Adobe could come collapsing down.

Seismologist say El Paso could experience a magnitude 7 earthquake.

The Franklin Mountains are proof that the El Paso area has scene earthquakes. The last big tectonic plate shifts were close to 5,000 years ago.

Just east of the mountains, underground, is a fault line called the Rio Grande Rift that runs all the way to Colorado.

A couple of earthquakes were felt in El Paso in April and May. The larger ones happened about 80 miles south of El Paso, in Chihuahua, Mexico.

People don't really think of El Paso as an earthquake place because most earthquakes happen on the edge of tectonic plates and we're in the middle of the North American plate but so is Washington D.C. and all of Colorado.

Diane Doser is a geological professor at the University of Texas in El Paso. She explains that earthquakes can occur in the middle of a tectonic plates.

Doser said there are plenty of websites that give tips on earthquake preparedness.

Earthquake Has Some Looking At New Madrid Fault

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - The rare earthquake that shook the East coast on Tuesday afternoon is causing some folks in the mid-state to look twice at our own earthquake threat from the New Madrid fault.

The fault has caused massive earthquakes before including four of the largest earthquakes in North America's history.

The massive quakes in 1811 and 1812 caused the Mississippi River to supposedly flow backwards and created Reelfoot Lake.

"The geologists and seismologists tell us that we're probably going to experience some type of event which will cause damages, about a 50 percent chance in the next 60 years. And so we're ready, we want everybody in the state to be ready for that," said Cecil Whaley with TEMA.

Experts said there's no need to panic, like many did in 1990 when a seismologist said the conditions were right for a massive earthquake. Fortunately, that prediction did not come to pass.

The magnitude 5.8 earthquake that struck Virginia on Tuesday was the largest on the East Coast since one of the same strength in New York in 1944.

The epicenter of Tuesday's quake, which hit at 1:51 p.m. EDT, was 3.7 miles underground near Mineral, Va., and about 90 miles southwest of Washington. It could be felt as far south as South Carolina and up into Martha's Vineyard where President Barack Obama was vacationing.

It was the largest in Virginia since a 5.9 temblor in 1897. The largest East Coast quake on record was a 7.3 in South Carolina in 1886.