I turned off the lamp and fell into bed, so exhausted that what happened next played out like a terrible dream.
Suddenly, what sounded like a sonic boom hit the house with such force that the whole bedroom shook violently. The bed heaved and rolled, as if a giant wave had lifted it.
Before I could think or move, a second boom. A second slam against the house. Violent wrenching. Ominous crashing sounds.
Still in darkness, terrified and utterly disoriented, I screamed and leapt to my feet. As suddenly as it started, the clamor and quaking stopped.
Bedlam!
Trembling and in shock, I turned on the overhead light. The lamp I’d just turned off lay mangled on the floor. Pictures tilted wildly.
Yet the room looked surprisingly intact. The closet did not. Nor did the bathroom. But I hadn’t seen them yet.
I stepped out into the dark hallway – and heard the sound of water running.
Oh no. What in the world is that?
I sprinted toward the kitchen. Reaching the doorway, I flipped on a light. The faucet across the room was running full on.
Relieved that it wasn’t something worse, I took one step – and jumped back, yelling, “Ouch!” I had stepped on broken glass.
Oh no. Oh no! The kitchen was in shambles.
Cabinets had flown open. Dishes, glasses, containers, cookware and food had crashed from shelves and countertops to the floor.
Voices behind me told me everyone else was up – and shocked and shaken.
Cleanup – of the food and broken glass and the shattered section of one toilet and other items littering the floors – lasted till 2:00 a.m. With our hearts still racing and aftershocks continuing, it felt better to try to restore some semblance of order than to try to lie back down.
Wrecked!
The fireplace had sustained major damage. In every room, drywall had cracked and fallen, covering everything with a fine layer of dust.
Otherwise, the house itself didn’t look wrecked. Photos would not convey the severity of the upheaval we had experienced. Yet we knew we must look deeper, and watch to see what might show up later.
What’s more, the cost just to repair the obvious issues would run into tens of thousands of dollars.
Come to think of it, I didn’t look wrecked either. Except for the cut on my foot, I had no physical injuries. Apparently, neither did anyone else who took the brunt of that quake. Yet I knew I must look deeper. For truly, we were wrecked.
- Wrecked by the trauma of those moments.
- Wrecked by sudden, significant damage to our homes.
- Wrecked by the “swarm” of smaller quakes that have shaken us and our property, again and again, day after day, for a month, and counting.
At night, tremors have jolted us awake, sometimes keeping us on edge for hours. Even in daytime, the aftershocks can shock us, like a fire alarm that screams just as suddenly and unexpectedly for a drill as for an emergency.
In the midst of all that, I was wrecked by the eerie silence that engulfed us and denied what had happened to us.
Silence!
We got little sleep the night of the big earthquake. In a world of news media, social media, political leaders and government agencies, we awoke the next morning to hear … crickets.
Even locally, any public or official mention of the quake was muted and constrained. From people who had not, actually, physically, checked on anyone out here, we heard something like:
“Oklahoma has had a 5.1 magnitude earthquake! But everything’s okay. No damage or injuries reported. Now on to other news.”
And thus, with a few notable exceptions, those tasked with investigating, reporting, helping, chose not to probe a major seismic event, its volatile aftermath and its impact on people’s lives.
So familiar, that silence. I’ve experienced it before, as have many others who have been abused, bullied, forsaken.
It’s the silence, and the silencing, that occur as the trauma continues – yet those who might have cared, and probed, and spoken up, put on their best face, and say: Nothing to see here. No wrongdoing. No real damage. No one hurt. No Big Deal.
So discouraging. So disorienting. Yet also, such a “tell.”
Any uneasy silence, that minimizes or denies
the trauma someone is facing,
shouts to those willing to hear:
Look deeper. Ask, Why?
Look!
Exhausted but determined, I began to look. The earthquake that has gotten so little mention has an impressive, and telling, bio.
Listed among the Significant Earthquakes worldwide in 2024 by the US Geological Survey (USGS), it was the largest quake in the continental US during January-February.1
It ties as fourth largest quake ever recorded in Oklahoma.
The latest of 16 quakes of magnitude 4.5 or greater to occur in the state since 2009, it’s the largest we’ve had since the biggest of all, a 5.8 in 2016.2
What’s more: The 5.1 temblor that slammed into us on February 2, 2024, at 11:24 pm, emanated from almost the same location as a 5.7 magnitude quake that ravaged people and property on November 5, 2011.3
Surge!
The more I’ve learned, the more I’ve realized: What has gone before has everything to do with the silence now.
“Beginning in 2009, Oklahoma experienced a surge in seismicity,” says a brief, undated post by the USGS. The surge was actually a spike of epic proportions.
The USGS attributed the dramatic increase to “an oil and gas related process” different from fracking, a process of “wastewater disposal” by injecting it “deep underground.”4
The November 2011 quake occurred early in that surge. The second largest in state history, that quake and two others prompted a class action lawsuit on behalf of property owners in nine Oklahoma counties – a lawsuit against companies operating wastewater injection wells.5
The Oklahoma Supreme Court had not yet ruled on the lawsuit as of May 6, 2015, when a U.S. News headline announced,
After Earthquakes, Silence in the Sooner State
A lengthy investigative article by Alan Neuhauser stated:
On April 21 [2015] –shortly before the U.S. Geological Survey published an updated map showing the potential intensity of man-made earthquakes – the Oklahoma Geological Survey [OGS] publicly concluded that wastewater injection was indeed the probable culprit behind the state’s sharp increase in earthquakes.
Neuhauser noted:
The finding wasn’t exactly earthshaking, but the silence that’s followed has bordered on deafening.6
On September 3, 2016, a 5.8 earthquake rocked central Oklahoma. The largest quake ever recorded in the state shattered the silence.
The governor declared a state of emergency for the county in which it occurred. State regulators ordered 37 wastewater injection wells to close. The EPA shut down 32 additional wells.7
After that, Oklahoma earthquakes of 3+ magnitude decreased as dramatically as they had risen, dropping below pre-2009 levels by 2019.8
Denial!
Interestingly, earthquake stats for Oklahoma since 2019 are harder to find.9
Meanwhile, people seeking relief and some kind of justice for the damages incurred in 2011 have waited a very long time. And no one that I can see is documenting the stories of their 12-year ordeal.
In 2023, plaintiffs reached a $5.9 million settlement with one company named in the class action suit. But that does not mean what you may think.
On the one hand: “Filings by those whose homes and businesses were damaged in the quakes contended they had developed scientific proof through geophysicists [that the seismicity in 2011] ‘was not an act of God, but instead was induced by wastewater disposal operations.’”10
On the other hand, the company agreeing to the payout still “denies that its operations caused the earthquakes.”11
So those who filed a claim by January 13, 2024, will? should? may? get some measure of financial reimbursement.
And after all these years, the court still did not rule. That’s the epitome of an uneasy silence.
February 2, the ground quaked fiercely. In almost the same spot.
Immediately, regulators shut down at least nine wells that the locals didn’t know were still open. Almost as quickly, the story was shuffled out of the news cycle.
Yet the earth keeps speaking – and urging us to hear.
By the evening of March 1, OGS seismometers had recorded 223 aftershocks; some, of 3+ magnitude. Let that sink in.
In 28 days,
in one swath of central Oklahoma,
we have had 223 earthquakes.
Revealer!
Again and again, I have felt the trauma of it in my body. Yet even as the earth has groaned – and the silence suppressed – some things have encouraged me.
Oklahoma Geological Survey teams spent days setting out seismographs in the area where the earthquakes have swarmed. They’ve invited the beleaguered earth, and the beleaguered people on it, to tell their stories.
KFOR news in Oklahoma City ran a brief story on the “swarm of earthquakes” and the OGS efforts to record and analyze it. The news team that prepared that story asked me to tell about my experience, and aired a snippet of it.12
Other people who live in this area are speaking up and seeking to be heard – even after everything that could have worn them down and shut them up.
And the God who has brought me through other nightmarish times keeps reminding me he has not changed.
Your God is indeed the God of gods,
the Lord of kings
and a revealer of secrets.
He reveals deep and secret things;
he knows what lies in the darkness;
and light dwells with him.
(Dan. 2:47, 22 CJB)
This God hears the silenced and defends the forsaken, even when we can’t for the life of us see or feel it. He wants us to cry out to him,
Arise, Lord! Lift up your hand, O God.
Do not forget the helpless. (Ps. 10:12)
As I’ve done that – and as I’ve sat before the Lord, weary and discouraged – he has reminded me how I cooperated with him other times when it seemed the silencing and the silencers could not be overcome.
Resist!
Eight years prior to this writing, at the same time the Oklahoma earthquake numbers surged, so did a swarm of man-made upheavals in my personal life – along with the eerie silences that denied them.
As I cried out to God, he began to teach me the value – and the power – of refusing to agree.13
Time and again, when slammed by another injustice, or reeling from the cumulative effects, I would say aloud to the Lord:
“Righteousness and justice
are the foundation of your throne.”14
This is not righteous. It is not just.
It is not from you. It opposes you.
I may be powerless to stop it from happening.
But I do not agree with it.
Even when it seemed an effort in futility, I kept refusing to agree that I should just “learn to live with” repeatedly being wrecked.
And then, over time, God made a way where there was none. Step by step, he gave me wisdom, courage, grace to overcome.
During this last month, as new trauma has rocked my world, I’ve remembered: The Lord has never failed me nor forsaken me. I’ve recalled how very far he has brought me.
Now, I begin again where I began years ago, to challenge the silence and the injustice it protects.
See also
- Cries of the shunned
- Defender of the forsaken
- Fighting fear with fear
- Illusionists! The abusers we have not seen
- The Lord who breaks open the way
Footnotes
- Oklahoma is the only US state listed as having three “significant earthquakes” in the first two months of 2024. All were in central OK. ↩︎
- By comparison: Before 2009, the region that is now the state of Oklahoma had a total of 4 quakes 4.5 or greater in all its recorded history. ↩︎
- Source for stats: “List of earthquakes in Oklahoma.” Note: Source stats give UTC time. Dates and times in this post are Oklahoma time. ↩︎
- “Oklahoma has had a surge of earthquakes since 2009. Are they due to fracking?” ↩︎
- Cooper v. New Dominion LLC, Class Action Website; http://oklahomaearthquakeslawsuit.com/. ↩︎
- “After Earthquakes, Silence in the Sooner State,” U.S. News & World Report. ↩︎
- “2016 Oklahoma earthquake,” Wikipedia. ↩︎
- See bar graph showing the spike in Oklahoma earthquakes here. ↩︎
- See, for example, “Oklahoma earthquake swarms (2009–present),” which includes detailed, well-documented information, but only until March 2017. ↩︎
- “Lawsuit settlement of $5.9 million reached in Prague’s 2011 earthquake,” OK Energy Today, Aug. 16, 2023. ↩︎
- Cooper v. New Dominion, see link above. ↩︎
- “Geologists install tiny seismometers following swarm of earthquakes,” by Amaya Ward/KFOR. ↩︎
- Since then, I’ve learned of a similar concept, called resisting. ↩︎
- Psalm 89:14. ↩︎
