JolieSimons.com

This intrepid (if I do say so myself) reporter was sitting at her desk, minding her own business, getting some work writing done when another quake rocked the Midwest. No reports yet on if this quake was an aftershock of the previous quake or an entirely new quake.

As you may know, an earthquake powered through the Midwest at about 4:30 this morning, central time. I was in bed and was awoken by the slight shaking which felt a lot like a large truck passing by. Of course, no such truck rolled by and eventually the panes in our windows stopped rattling. The main quake was centered near Bellmont, Illinois, near the border of Indiana. A New York Times report claims that the quake could be felt as far away as Cincinnati and Milwaukee.

There is no word yet on the quake that just occurred at roughly 10:15 this morning. We don’t yet know the magnitude or reason for the shaking.

Our quake measured 5.2 on the Richter scale. As you may remember from school, the Richter scale is a scale that measures the amount of energy released in an earthquake. Even a tenth of a point on the scale is a significant difference in the amount of energy released. A quake of this magnitude is enough to cause damage to poorly designed buildings or rattle pictures off of walls. Those of us who live in well-constructed buildings have little to worry about.

St. Louis, where I live, sits in a silt-covered valley where two major rivers converge, the Mississippi and Missouri. This silty material provides a great way to transmit the waves created by an earthquake. Other areas of the midwest that sit close to bedrock probably won’t feel the quake as well, if at all.

For more information on the Richter magnitude scale, see the Wikipedia article.

Last night at a council meeting in Kirkwood, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, a lone gunman started firing at a city council meeting, killing five before turning the gun on himself. He killed two police officers and three city officials.

The city’s mayor, Mike Swoboda, is in critical condition at St. John’s mercy hospital.

Charles Lee Thornton, the alleged gunman, is said to have a long history of animosity toward the Kirkwood city council. He was repeatedly thrown out of city council meetings because of his antics.

Thornton had, in January of this year, lost a lawsuit against the city of Kirkwood, alleging a first amendment violation for preventing him from speaking during two city council meetings which resulted in him being dragged out in handcuffs.

Mr. Thornton, nicknamed “Cookie,” was a 1974 graduate of Kirkwood high school.