‘We Thought A Bomb Went Off’: Residents React Around Earthquake Epicenter

The epicenter of Friday night's wave of quakes was near a small Oklahoma town where neighbors say the shaking knocked things off shelves and left cracks in the walls.

The Oklahoma Corporation Commission ordered disposal well within ten miles to be shut down in response on Saturday. That deadline is on Feb. 17.

“Seeing things on the dresser falling onto the ground,” Dennis Salzman, a Meeker resident, described. 

“Shaking the whole house back and forth,” Rhyan Petros, a Prague resident who lives a quarter mile from the earthquake epicenter, said. 

The 5.1 magnitude earthquake rattled across Lincoln County and was felt across the state.

“It was pretty crazy,” Petros said. 

The earthquake woke his family up around 11:30 Friday night.

“We thought a bomb went off,” he said. 

“I knew immediately what it was,” Salzman said. 

Both said the event knocked things some things off the wall. 

“Just literally glassware, dishes, everything fell out of the shelves,” Salzman said. 

“It even moved our refrigerator out from the wall about four inches,” Petros said. “You’re used to tornadoes in Oklahoma but not earthquakes.”

For Salzman, there’s a longer road ahead.

“I was fearing for the worst over here and it was,” he said. 

A quake in 2011 damaged his rental property.

“The worst part is the drywall,” Salzman said. “The toughest to fix. This was just done. Brand new paint, brand new drywall, everything, everywhere.”

The windows separated from the walls, which were left with cracks under the fresh paint.

“Heartbreak set in because I knew all the money and time we’d put into getting the house fixed up and now we have to start back from scratch again,” Salzman said. 

But Salzman says the only way out is through.

“Oh absolutely,” he said. “Knock off the dust, get back in the saddle, keep on going.”

He and his wife are okay, along with their dogs, which he said is what matters most.