Don

“A 5.2 magnitude earthquake occurred on February 9th, 10:14pm central time in the Gulf of Mexico, about 114 miles (not Kilometers) south of Grand Isle, Louisiana.”

“What's interesting about this event is that it was void of any high frequency energy. Speculation is that it probably wasn't an earthquake, but instead a sea floor slump. Something did happen, but possibly not a true earthquake.”

“-David”

Hi All. It appears the Gulf Coast may have dodged a bullet that could have made Katrina look like a drip.

Shortly after the quake occurred I contacted USGS to see if they could get a “moment tensor solution” for the quake. I didn’t get one, but got a little more then what I bargained for. As soon as I read the word “slump” I did a little research on the Gulf of Mexico in regards to slumps and earthquakes. What I found was quite interesting. Take Care…Don in creepy town

“An undersea landslide - technically, a "slump" - about 90 miles off Galveston once sent some 12 to 14 cubic miles of earth sliding down. The slump at the gulf's East Breaks formation threw a tsunami estimated at 25 feet high onto the Texas shoreline, according to researchers who have studied its geological aftermath on the gulf floor. That was about 5,000 to 10,000 years ago - many lifetimes for humans, but a blink in geological time. Peter Trabant, a marine hazards consultant in Houston who has studied the landslide, said there's no reason to believe that it won't happen again. "If it happened again, it would rush over all the barrier islands, including Galveston Island, and all the coastal cities - Port Arthur, Galveston, Freeport, Corpus Christi," Trabant said. "There's definitely a possibility that this could happen at any time." Still, the likelihood that it will happen anytime soon seems so small that Texas has done nothing to plan for it.”

• Gulf of Mexico