Magnitude 5.1 earthquake rattles central Oklahoma

A magnitude 5.1 earthquake struck 1.86 miles underground 5 miles northwest of Prague, Oklahoma, Friday, setting off weaker aftershocks.

The shallow earthquake, identified by the U.S. Geological Survey as the main shock, happened at 11:24 p.m. The area had seen a minor magnitude 1.5 earthquake on Jan. 19.

While shallow earthquakes create more dramatic tremors, there were no reported injuries or damage to buildings and infrastructure.

“Nothing significant … nothing other than lots of scared people,” Lincoln County Deputy Emergency Management Director Charlotte Brown told The Associated Press.

Beverly Parker, a resident of Bixby, 55 miles northeast of Prague, told Tulsa Fox affiliate KOKI-TV, “I thought it was thunder, it rumbled really loud. Then the house started shaking, including walls, and moved my bed. It was really scary.”

The 37 aftershocks lasted seven hours.

People told the USGS they felt the tremors extended across Oklahoma, north into Kansas, south into Texas and east into Arkansas and Missouri.

“Earthquakes east of the Rocky Mountains … are typically felt over a much broader region than earthquakes of similar magnitude in the West. … A magnitude 5.5 earthquake in eastern or central North America might be felt by much of the population out to more than [300 miles] away from its source,” the USGS explained in its overview of the quake.

The epicenter of Friday’s earthquake was nearly the same as a magnitude 5.7 earthquake in the Prague area in 2011, Matt Skinner of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission told AP.