[424] Earth Day Lecture To Focus On Earthquake Preparedness

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 18, 2011
EDITORIAL CONTACT: Gina Logue, 615-898-5081

EARTH DAY LECTURE TO FOCUS ON EARTHQUAKE PREPAREDNESS
Tennessee State Geologist Slated to Assess New Madrid Seismic Zone

(MURFREESBORO) – State Geologist Ron Zurawski, director of the Tennessee Division of Geology, will deliver an Earth Day address at 3 p.m. Friday, April 22, in the State Farm Lecture Hall of MTSU’s Business and Aerospace Building. This event, which is sponsored by the MTSU Department of Geosciences and Sigma Gamma Epsilon, is free and open to the public.

Zurawski will speak about the 1811-1812 earthquakes that occurred in the New Madrid seismic zone, an area made up of several faults stretching from Marked Tree, Ark., to Cairo, Ill. The faults in this zone, which encompasses part of northwestern Tennessee, still constitute a potential earthquake threat.

In addition, Zurawski will talk about the Great Central U.S. Shakeout, a nationwide drill in which Americans are encouraged to “drop, cover and hold on” for at least 60 seconds, as though a major earthquake is occurring, at 10:15 a.m. on Thursday, April 28.

“In light of recent great earthquakes in Japan, Haiti, Chili, Sumatra, etc., we think that the lecture should be of interest to people both on and off-campus,” says Dr. Warner Cribb, professor of geology.

Zurawski was appointed state geologist and director of the Tennessee Division of Geology in 1996. Since 2007, he has served as a Tennessee Emergency Management Agency alternate emergency services coordinator and was appointed to the Geology Advisory Committee in the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance in 2008.

For more information, contact Cribb at 615-898-2379 or cribb@mtsu.edu. To hear Gina Logue’s interview with Zurawski on WMOT’s “MTSU on the Record,” go to http://www.mtsu.edu/news/podcast/podcast2011.shtml and click on “April 17, 2011.”

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ATTENTION, MEDIA: For a color jpeg of Ron Zurawski, contact Gina Logue in the MTSU Office of News and Media Relations at 615-898-5081 or gklogue@mtsu.edu.

Founded in 1911, Middle Tennessee State University is a Tennessee Board of Regents institution located in Murfreesboro and is the state’s largest public undergraduate institution. MTSU now boasts one of the nation’s first master’s degree programs in horse science, and the Council of Graduate Schools in Washington, D.C., acclaims MTSU’s Master of Science in Professional Science degree—the only one in Tennessee—as a model program. Recently, MTSU unveiled three new doctoral degrees in the sciences.