The chandelier in the lobby of the Greenbrier Hilltop Inn and Suites sways whenever the earth moves underneath the Faulkner County town.
It has been swinging a lot lately, said hotel manager Kevin Patel.
More than 750 earthquakes, mostly small and unfelt, have rattled the area since early last fall.
On Friday, a quake registering 4.3 in magnitude shook at 2:13 a.m. - the largest earthquake recorded since the series of temblors began in September.
“It starts shaking and we hear a ‘boom,’” Patel said.“The chandelier begins to swing.”
The temblors also knocked decorative rings off a chandelier at the home of Danielle Havens, assistant administrator for the Greenbrier Police Department.
“It shakes everything,” Havens said of the latest round of earthquakes.
Friday’s quake is the thirdlargest to be recorded near Greenbrier since 1985 when thousands of earthquakes known as the Enola Swarm rumbled over a three-year period.
People reported feeling the ground shake Friday in Pocahontas, Fayetteville, Little Rock and in Missouri, according to the U.S.
Geological Survey.
The morning tremor also triggered a seismic station near Keiser in Mississippi County, causing geologists to first think that the New Madrid seismic zone - a separate line of faults that cuts through Illinois into northeastern Arkansas - had rumbled. Later, though, scientists determined that the seismic waves from the Greenbrier earthquake were monitored by the Keiser station and no separate temblor had occurred there.
Greenbrier’s Friday morning quake was preceded by one registering 4.0 in magnitude at 10:59 p.m. Thursday. An aftershock of 3.2 was re-corded at 6:18 a.m. Friday.
Greenbrier police said the temblor shattered a window in a home in Spring Hill, and cracked the ceiling and caused a 6-inch wide gap in the wall of a home on Arkansas 285 northeast of Greenbrier.
“Everybody felt it,” Havens said. “It’s getting scary.”
Geologists are trying to determine the cause of the quakes that occur along a fault system between Greenbrier and Guy in northern Faulkner County. More than 750 have been recorded since they began in September. At least 13 were recorded by Friday evening 2 to 3 miles northeast of Greenbrier.
Other quakes have been centered farther north, near Guy.
They could be caused by the injections of saltwater in deep-well disposal sites by gas and oil drillers, or they could be the result of the slipping of the fault, said Scott Ausbrooks, geohazard supervisor for the Arkansas Geological Survey.
The quakes seem to intensify around the 15th of each month.
“It’s curious,” Ausbrooks said. “It’s part of all of what we are looking at. Is it a pattern? Is there a real pattern for midmonth earthquakes? Is it coincidence?”
The quakes also have coincided with the occurrence of a full moon, but Ausbrooks quickly rebuffed that as a possible cause.
“The moon does have effect on tides, but it doesn’t on faults,” he said. “If it did, all the faults would be popping off everywhere. It wouldn’t be picking only on Guy.”
Residents are nervous, fearing the “big one” may strike. But Ausbrooks said the fault beneath Faulkner County is not capable of producing astronger 6.0-magnitude quake. “There’s an outside chance we may see a 5.0 or even 5.5, but it’s unlikely,” he said.
Still, the fear exists.
“We heard a big booming,” Patel said Friday in his hotel. “It woke me up. I was about to run outside.
“This is not a situation you want to be in,” he said.
LaTresha Woodruff, a spokesman for the Conway Police Department, said the department received several calls from people who felt the shaking in Conway.
“I woke up at 2 a.m., and it felt like I was moving,” she said. “I thought I was dreaming at first.”
Havens’ son told her he’s afraid to go to sleep at night now because of the earthquakes, she said.
“It’s freaking everyone out,” she said. “It’s not like a storm coming. You can’t predict. You don’t know when it’s coming.”
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 02/19/2011