Thank you all for the well wishes. This working nights gets in the way of a lot of things, and that was the delay in my checking in...That and a new system and a secretary who decided to take off, so I had a brand new system I had to work with (which I actually kind of liked when I got used to it) and I had to do the secretaries job as well as mine to do. I had no spare time for quite a while there. Eighteen years is long enough to work nights. Rita, I've always lived where there was a tornado "season". The closest I have actually been to one was one block...Plenty close enough. Friday night there were three people killed by the storm that had passed south of to us...It did only tree and power line damage here (I wish it had blown a few more limbs out of the big oak tree in back). The town where it hit is only 50 miles from us. Another one hit in Tuscaloosa which is much closer, so it was not a good night, but we were truly blessed. kay

My parents are slightly east of I35 and therefore east of the major fires (as well as south, I believe), but they are having a terrible dought and my father has to haul water to his cows every day, which means my mother has to do the driving since DF is legally blind and is on medication for Parkinson's. The drought is a slow disaster, compared to the fires and tornados. I think DF needs to do a rain dance, which he would if he knew how. A warehouse burned last week in Temple, which is close to where my parents live and where DM used to go to church, until that burned down. Both of those fires were probably arson, however. Lars

"I didn't realize the ASHI Reporter was available online to non-members. That was an interesting article. That article was a bit of a wake-up call for me. I haven't had many close calls, and that has led to some complacency." Talk about close calls.... I have friends in Ohio who were looking at houses. They found a nice wooded property built in 1907 but didn't buy because they couldn't build a garage on the property. They sent me this story. I'm glad they didn't get it because they have curious kids. The present owner is lucky he had a friend with him that day. 911 Call: 'My Friend Fell Down a Well; Can't Get Him Out' WESTLAKE, Ohio -- A man came close to drowning in his own sump pump after his basement filled with water Wednesday. A friend who was nearby when the accident occurred at 851 Bradley Road, told police that 53-year old Hal Seagraves, fell head first into the 8-foot hole. "I've got a friend that fell down a sump pump well...he's submerged and I can't get him out," the victim's friend said to the 911 dispatcher, "Too heavy." When police arrived at the home, they found Seagraves not moving, wedged upside down at the bottom of the 8-foot well. According to Lt. Ray Arcuri with Westlake police, the man's head and arms were submerged in two feet of water. A link that might be useful: www.fox8.com/news/wjw-news-westlake-well-fall,0,2597403.story

Another oil producing activity can cause small earthquakes and that is "water drives". It does similar things to the deep earth structure, but may not as severe as fracking. However, water drives continue over a long period of time. Waste liquid from producing wells is forced down a spent well or wells at the edge of an oil dome forcing flow through the strata toward the upper part of the oil dome. This drives the remaining oil toward the producing wells and gets rid of the crappy liquid left over from a producing well. The waste water is supposed to be put back into the oil bearing strata from whence it came, but I suspect there are instances where it goes elsewhere. Water from an oil well is filled with noxious crud and will ruin water wells if it escapes into the aquifer supplying these wells.