Nicole Taylor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
The World-Spectator
In addition to the earthquake, there were high winds that night, a snow storm, and a weather-related power outages that occurred around the region, making for an unsettling night for some people in the area.
Lesley Fayant-Eddy was camping with her family north of Esterhazy when the quake hit, and she says it gave their camper a startling shake.
“It was kind of a triple-whammy. We we’re out camping, and we were dealing with snow, crazy wind, and now another bump from the ground!” said Fayant-Eddy, who had her night interrupted by the quake.“We’re actually from Yorkton, but we spend a lot of time down in Esterhazy where some of our good friends live. This time we were down there for the dirt biking and quadding trails, which is something we do every Thanksgiving. A bunch of us normally go down with campers, but this year it was only two brave campers. It was so beautiful early in the weekend, but we’d seen the weather forecast for Sunday, so we brought our shorts, tank tops, and winter gear! We were camping on a private property about one mile north of Esterhazy, near the Esterhazy Dam.
”The earthquake was a big surprise in the middle of the night.
“We had actually just got back from Thanksgiving supper. We hunkered down, got the kids to bed—mostly normal stuff. I was lying in bed, reading stuff on my phone and my husband had just fallen asleep. The wind didn’t seem as bad as it was to us because we had a bit of a shelter belt of poplars.
“Then, all of a sudden it hit. It threw us left very abruptly, then it rocked back to the right and then settled back down. It was to the point that I thought maybe something had fallen on us, or that a car or something had shoved us, but there was no bang or anything. It was crazy because seconds before it happened, it sounded like thunder was rolling.
“My oldest daughter said that it gave a sense that she was falling, like the shuddering feeling your heart gets. After that I heard a few notifications on my phone and found out that we’d just had an earthquake. The other camper that was with us was about five metres away, and so we were talking back and forth wondering if we were still on our pads. So I got my coat and my lantern, and you could see that the snow on the pads had been pushed away. One thing that I did notice was that my chocks had moved, and never in my decades of camping have I ever had my chocks move. We wandered around the yard for a bit to see if anything else had happened, but everything else seemed fine.
“That’s definitely the first time we’ve felt an earthquake, but our friends in Esterhazy had experienced the August one, and the epicenter was very close to them in that one, so it felt pretty strong.
“We were pretty spooked when it first happened, not really knowing what it was. Our neighbors in the other camper actually had their water bottles knocked off the island, and their TV even fell off the wall. I was up most of the night after that!
“Our power went out at around 3 am, but not from the quake, it was from the weight of the snow.”
Earthquakes common in Esterhazy area
Earthquakes are common in the Esterhazy area, because of the geological makeup under the earth in that area, which is also the reason the area is conducive to potash mining.
Earthquakes are rare in Saskatchewan, but when they do occur, around half of them occur in the Esterhazy area.
Andrew Frederikson, a seismologist at the University of Manitoba, pointed out in 2016 that while some earthquakes in the area may be due to the mining, others are not.
“Some of these earthquakes may be what are called induced, [in] that they’re related to human activities. But probably not all of them,” Frederikson said.He said Esterhazy sits on top of the prairie evaporite formation, which contains potash and other dissolvable minerals, making it more prone to earthquakes.
“They’re not necessarily concentrated where the most mining is. They’re specifically concentrated on the edge of the evaporite, which suggests that there’s some sort of dissolution effect going on.
“Particularly this cluster just sort of east of Esterhazy which might have something to do with what the groundwater is doing there. Maybe there’s just more groundwater interacting with the evaporite formation in that region.
”He said the prairie evaporite formation runs through a large part of the prairies, but it is the outer edge of it—where Esterhazy is located—that is most prone to earthquakes.
