Oklahoma's largest quake buckles highway; 1 injured
By the
CNN Wire Staff
updated 6:04 AM EST, Sun November 6, 2011
Several homes in Oklahoma were damaged after a strong earthquake struck late Saturday near Sparks, Oklahoma.
Crews in central Oklahoma were out early Sunday morning assessing for damage from the largest quake to hit the state since record-keeping began.The 5.6-magnitude quake struck 4 miles east of Sparks in Lincoln County at 11:53 p.m. ET Saturday.
No major injuries were reported, but the quake caused at least three sections of U.S. Route 62 to buckle, said Aaron Bennett of the Lincoln County 911 and emergency management.
A boulder rolled into a rural county road, blocking it.
Crews also reported some structural damage, including a roof collapse and a damaged ventilation system in a municipal building.
"They're reporting that all the houses look like they've been ransacked," Bennett said of the assessment crews.
At least one person was taken to a hospital in Prague with minor injuries, he said.
The man hit his head against a wall when he tripped and fell while trying to run out of his house, Bennett said.
In Broken Arrow, resident Bubba Fernandez said the earth shook for a full minute when the quake struck.
"It was at least a minute," Fernandez told CNN affiliate KTUL. "Upstairs, my kid's trophy, the piano upstairs, the little tassels on the fan -- it was at least a minute"
Some 200 miles away in Garland, Texas, resident Noel Kennedy said he felt the quake.
"I heard stuff rattling. Mirrors were shaking," he said.
The Saturday night quake struck the same area where a 4.7-magnitude quake struck just hours earlier -- at 3:12 a.m. ET Saturday.
By 8 a.m. Saturday, geologists had recorded more than 30 aftershocks from it.
The strongest quake previously reported was of magnitude 5.5 on April 9, 1952, according to the Oklahoma Geological Survey.