Hundreds of sensors record Nevada quake

TWIN FALLS, Idaho – Days like Thursday, when a 6.0 magnitude earthquake sent shock waves into Southern Idaho, are the days Bill Phillips dreams of.

He harbors no ill will, of course, toward the 1,300 residents of Wells, Nev., who today are cleaning up their town in the aftermath. It’s just that earthquakes are Phillips’ business.

He’s a research geologist at the Idaho Geological Survey, who sees “a silver lining” in Thursday’s cloud of destruction.

Because of a National Science Foundation program called EarthScope, the Wells quake could be one of the most recorded in history. Scientists like Phillips should be able to use information from hundreds of seismographs recently placed in Idaho, Nevada, Montana and Utah to learn more about how and why earthquakes happen.

“This earthquake will have been recorded by hundreds more seismographs than normal,” he said from his Moscow office Thursday morning, about three hours after the quake struck.

The NSF program is moving hundreds of seismographs westward every 18 months to map the country’s seismic activity. By chance, the bulk of those meters were placed near the epicenter of Thursday’s quake.

That’s a godsend to scientists in the interior West who don’t have as much data on area earthquakes as scientists near legendary faults such as the San Andreas in California.

Little is known about area fault lines in Southern Idaho and northern Nevada compared with faults in California that have been studied for decades after major quakes, he said.

“It’s a pretty rural area that just hasn’t been studied as much,” he said.

Scientists do know, however, the potential for quakes exists here. Idaho and Nevada both rank in the top five among states for earthquake risks, according to the Idaho Geological Survey.

Small quakes have been reported in Idaho as recently as last month, and the Wells quake hit an area in Nevada with known active faults, Phillips said.