News2 at Eleven
KWGN (CW) Denver, CO DMA: 18
11:25AM MDT April 22 2008
Programming Type: News

could dancing help patients with parkinson's? researchers from washington university school .. seem to think so .. especially if its the tango. they say patients who took part in 20 sessions of regular tango dance classes .. showed improvement on the berg balance scale .. which measures balance in a variety of positions. talk about making a speedy delivery. a baby girl in north carolina was brought into the world at 80

Fox 2 News Edge
KTVI (Fox) St. Louis, MO DMA: 21
10:13PM CDT April 21 2008
Programming Type: News

an after shock measuring 4.0 rolled through the area early this morning. does this many more serious quakes could be on the way? charles jay sob spends the day with the leading experts and charles, what do the experts say? >> reporter: we're really not sure. very rarely after shocks like this come before a major quake but mostly, though, they just die down gradually but it turns out a lot of what we know about quakes around here is wrong, starting with where the real danger may come from. the first thing to remember, the earth is a alive and in constant motion and that includes the ground beneath our feet and the rocks beneath that. friday's quake and the one since started because of weaknesses in the earth's crust right where we're standing. >> the weakness is going down to depths of 20 miles or so within the earth because the earthquakes that are occurring, and the eater quakes that occurred last week and today they're about 10 miles deep. >> reporter: we usually think of earthquakes where the giant plates that make up the earth's surface meet but we're dead in the center of the north american plate. it turns out though the earth's crust is weak here because north america almost ripped apart right here. >> what happened in st. louis was about 750 million years ago we almost for apart here, there was a lot of rifting a lot of volcanic activity and that cause the crust to be thinned which is why the mississippi river flows down it. >> reporter: the mississippi roles down the scar and that incredible stretching left the earth's crust thin. then how often should we expect earthquakes given that? >> the particular problem here is we have earthquakes, we're not really sure what are the conditions for recharging the earth's battery for earthquakes and when an earthquake occurs and it discharges, how long does it take to charge up again? >> reporter: no one knows. the biggest danger say scientists may come from some other earthquake fault we don't even know about yet. >> there was a small earthquake under east st. louis a couple of years ago. it was a very, very small, magnitude two, but there are faults everywhere and i think people should realize that the chance of an earthquake happening is greater everywhere than they think. >> reporter: but a quake does not mean a devastating quake which is so unlikely here that neither of these experts has a so-called earthquake supply kit at home. if the house were shaking i would make sure that the house was safe and make sure there were no disropings of the gas or the water or electricity and that nothing was broken and if something was broken i would it exit the house. >> reporter: it's not like you've got a month's supply of water or generator. >> not particularly. i'm than worried about that. >> well, he's the expert. he's than worried. -- not worried. >> reporter: what the experts are saying is look, there's been a lot of noise about the fault which they say is not that much a danger. the activity is going down gradually to the point where it's almost dissipating. from the with wabash fault maybe, would it cause devastation? no. would it likely collapse older brick buildings? they said most people have nothing to worry about. if you're going to have an emergency kit you're more likely to need it for a thunderstorm. >> it was a little bit scary, i was sound asleep and it woke me up. >> reporter: and there are three types of earth movements in earthquakes. the one we had straight up and down is the best kind to have because it's just going to shake things up. the side to side motion much more problematic because it can stress buildings. and then you have the wave motion. that's the motion that tears down buildings. bisbasically the bottom line is we don't need to worry that much about a major devastating end of the world apocalypse type of earth earthquake. >> insurance companies may not be too happy to hear about that. >> reporter: they all said have earthquake insurance. so remember the deduct i believed on those things are 10, 15, 20 thousand dollars and you ask well, if i had that kind of cash, would i need earthquake insurance in the first place. >> all right, charles. thanks so much.