Oklahoma was hit with a 4.2 magnitude earthquake Wednesday night. The earthquake was located in central Oklahoma, where five other earthquakes have hit in the past 24 hours, according to NPR.
Four hours later, a less intense earthquake of a preliminary magnitude 3.5 struck the area in the early hours of Thursday.
The quake late Wednesday was the largest magnitude earthquake to strike the area, near the city of Edmond, since Tuesday night. The USGS said the earthquake was "widely felt" in Edmond and northern Oklahoma City, which is located about 15 miles away. It happened a few minutes before 10 p.m. local time at a preliminary depth of 2.3 kilometers (1.43 miles).
Oklahoma City KWTV Meterologist Cassie Heiter had this to say.
The U.S. Geological Survey has given the preliminary magnitude at 4.2, but the final number could be a bit higher. If you haven’t been following earthquake news in former Attorney General-turned EPA head Scott Pruitt’s state—it’s been sort of insane. And even though it has been known for a few years now that the rise in earthquake activity in Oklahoma is connected to the fracking industry’s waste water injection practices, and while there has been moves to regulate that side of the business, the head of our EPA has already shown a history of his ambitions far outweigh the environmental protections he should be enforcing.
In the face of this undeniable trend even Oklahoma's oil-friendly government has been forced to take action by reducing fracking wastewater injection volumes in certain hard-hit areas. However, during his time as AG, Pruitt was notably absent from any of these efforts, which is unsurprising considering his extremely strong ties to the oil and gas industry. Harold G. Hamm, the chief executive of Continental Energy, an Oklahoma oil and gas company (he's also a candidate for Energy Secretary under Trump), was a co-chairman of Pruitt’s 2013 re-election campaign. In that campaign, which was unopposed, Pruitt raised $114,000 from energy company PACs and executives.
So, while Oklahomans worked to save their earth from shaking, Pruitt collected money from the industry fighting to make the earth shake.
