New Madrid Seismic Zone Earthquake Warning;Tennessee to be hardest hit

[MikeNY]

The Federal Emergency Management Agency said if earthquakes strike in what geologists define as the New Madrid Seismic Zone, they would cause "the highest economic losses due to a natural disaster in the United States."

FEMA predicted a large earthquake would cause "widespread and catastrophic physical damage" across Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee -- home to some 44 million people.

Tennessee is likely to be hardest hit, according to the study that sought to gauge the impact of a 7.7 magnitude earthquake in order to guide the government's response.
In Tennessee alone, it forecast hundreds of collapsed bridges, tens of thousands of severely damaged buildings and a half a million households without water.

http://news.aol.com/article/us-warns-of-possible-catastrophic-quake/256282

[Andy62]

Missouri is my home state and I can recall many earthquakes while I was growing up.

[trafficmonkey]

I live just south of Nashville, and I've fished in Reelfoot Lake (northwest TN) which was formed by a series of earthquakes in late 1811 & early 1812. Experts say some of these would match any Richter scale reading ever recorded.

[MikeNY]

I remember reading that in the Great New Madriad earthquake the Mississippi River ran backwards! God bless those 40 million people and lets hope it never comes.