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Pahaska shakes during Tuesday's 4.2 quake
By Carole Cloudwalker
This document was published online on Wednesday, March 26, 2008
When a red fox attempts to climb a tree and two brave malamute dogs suddenly refuse to leave their houses, it's probably time for people in the neighborhood to worry.
That was the conclusion of Pahaska Tepee Resort caretaker Mike Taguiam early Tuesday morning when resort owner Bob Coe's malamutes, “Allie” and “Chewie,” who are usually friendly and sociable, stayed in their doghouses and would not come out.
Then Taguiam spotted a red fox he knows as “Frosty” clinging frantically to the lower six inches of a nearby tree like a drunk leaning on a light post. He was pretty sure Frosty wasn't drunk.
Taguiam, who was checking guest cabins along the front parking lot of the lodge at about 6 a.m. Tuesday, next felt a familiar and unsettling “rolling” movement beneath his feet that told him what was happening.
He was experiencing an earthquake.
“For a few seconds I thought for sure something more was going to happen,” Taguiam said.
“You lose your balance. It felt like I lost gravity ... that if I walked, I would fall down. It felt like a subway train rumbling underground.”
Then a light aftershock occurred.
Following the aftershock the dogs were fine and Taguiam later saw Frosty the fox (whom others refer to as “Gracie” and to her mate as “George”) lurking by a snowdrift under the eaves of a building. It was back to business as usual.
Taguiam is no stranger to earthquakes. As a 9-year-old boy he lived through the infamous 1959 “night the mountain moved” earthquake near West Yellowstone, Mont.
That time around, the earthquake tossed Taguiam from his bed and sent him crashing head-first into a wall of his grandparents' log home. He remembers flying through the air, then waking up in the hospital - bruised and confused.
The Hebgen Lake quake occurred at 11:37 p.m. Aug. 17, 1959, and registered at magnitude 7.3 on the Richter scale.
That quake and a related slide caused millions of dollars in damage and left more than 28 people dead. Taguiam had been about 15 miles from its epicenter.
The Tuesday morning quake he felt at Pahaska was nothing like the 1959 rumbler, but it did register at magnitude 4.2 about 23 miles south of Cooke City, according to the U.S. Geological Survey's Web site.
A second 2.4 magnitude tremor was felt at 6:03 a.m. Tuesday in the same area, the Web site indicates.
At least one Crandall-area resident also reported feeling the quake, though other people said they were awake at the time and didn't feel anything.
After Taguiam observed the fox clinging to a tree - a sight he'd never seen before - “the next thing I knew the ground started shaking, or rather it felt like there was something underneath my feet,” Taguiam says.
“I could hear the main lodge building popping and creaking.”
After making some phone calls, Taguiam learned that earthquakes are not common on the east side of Yellowstone Park.
He immediately began searching for damage, fearing a minimum of broken windows. He didn't find any damage.
When the shaking stopped, Taguiam returned to inspecting cabin and lodge roofs for snow accumulation.
He said some 4 inches of fresh snow fell Tuesday, making a total of about 36 inches on the ground by the end of the day.
“It would have been nice if it had shaken all the snow off the roof so I wouldn't have to shovel it,” Taguiam said following the earthquake.
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