Coushatta Earthquake

COUSHATTA, La. -- People in the Edgefield-Coushatta area are still talking about a series of earthquakes that rattled the region over the past several days.

Jakendrick Devlin said he was at home when the shaking started, and woke up his roommate. 

“I was like, ‘You felt that?’ He looked at me. I said, ‘Man, it was an earthquake.’ I was scared,” Devlin said.

Monday morning brought a string of five quakes to the area, including a 4.0 magnitude event that was later upgraded to 4.4 magnitude by the U.S. Geological Survey.

Residents are also still stunned by last Thursday’s 4.9 magnitude earthquake — the strongest inland quake ever recorded in Louisiana. A loud rumbling sound has accompanied the motion. 

At Chester’s Quik Trip convenience store on state Highway 1, workers said rows of bottles lining the wall wiggled and clinked together during the tremor, though none fell over. At another location, managers reported that cooking oil sloshed out of a fryer when the ground jolted.

For many people in the area — whether at home, work or out running errands — the shaking was unsettling.

Sianta Thomas, who works at a rehabilitation care facility, said the moment caught everyone off guard.

“The whole building just got to shaking,” Thomas said. “So I was like, ‘Oh my God, what is going on?’ Everybody started saying it’s happening — it’s an earthquake. I thought it was going to shake the building off its foundation.”

So far, officials say there have been no reported injuries or structural damage from the quakes.

Because the earthquakes occurred within the Haynesville Shale — one of the largest natural gas formations in the United States — some people in the community are questioning whether wastewater injection related to drilling could be linked to the seismic activity.