Earthquake near Cleveland? Or was it?

I realize that this is not a normal CreepyCleveland type of story but think it is an excellent forum to discus anything unknown or mysterious. I want to start by saying I am not trying to say that I know what’s going on, quite the contrary, I don’t think we will ever know what is going on, but putting this out to see if anyone else feels that last week’s “earthquake” sounds fishy. I am very inquisitive in general but not what I would consider a conspiracy quack. I live in Bedford Ohio, and on Tuesday march 13th 2007, I received a somewhat frantic call from a friend who lives in Streetsboro. “Did you feel that explosion?!” he asked, and since I was extremely tired when I got home from work and fell asleep around 6pm, I hadn’t felt anything. This was about 8:15pm, he went on to tell me that around 7:15 he and his kids heard a loud explosion and a few seconds later felt a shock hit their mobile home. He said it felt as though it hit from the southeast and move through to the northwest. it rattled things off the shelves, but it only lasted for a second or two, then nothing. He ran outside and found neighbors also out trying to see what happened, they looked for a smoke plume and saw nothing. He, his wife, and kids then went out driving to try and discover what happened. he was alarmed (and intrigued) enough that they drove around until after 9:00 and the only thing they saw out of the ordinary was a truck (or trucks, I am not sure how many) that he described as big box trucks that were yellow and the only thing written on them was “Hazardous Material Containment and Disposal Unit”. These trucks were very near the Ravenna Arsenal, heading toward it. for those of you who are not familiar with the Ravenna arsenal, it is a very large US Army base (over 21,000 acres in size) which has been an Ordnance plant and ammunition dump since before World War Two. There have been many rumors surrounding the arsenal, not the least of which that large amounts of chemical & biological agents, and nuclear weapons are stored there, and in less than proper conditions. [Check out] Google Maps the large gray blob you will see the upper right hand corner is the base. If you go on Google Earth and look at it you will see hundreds of dots in lined up perfectly in geometric grids, I am pretty sure these are what they call “magazines” or “Igloo type bunkers”, which are small concrete bunkers covered in a mound of earth which are designed to store high explosives and are strategically placed in case there is an accidental ignition, that they won’t cause a chain reaction and ignite other magazines. there are persisting rumors that there are miles and miles of underground facility which house much more dangerous munitions. You can zoom in and scroll around the base and you will see many area’s of land which are extremely discolored, presumably from leaking hazardous waste, although that can’t be confirmed. Getting back to my story, after I talked to my first friend I decided to see if another friend had heard (or felt) anything, he lives in Deerfield which is just on the other side of Ravenna. he informed me that he had been in Akron around that time and didn’t hear anything, however he called me up later (about 9:30) to tell me that he heard a rumbling and ran outside to see large military transport planes (probably c-130’s) coming over his house at tree top level, he said the sound was deafening. I am telling you all this purely because I felt it was odd and that it may or may not be coincidental. Since the 90’s the base has been scaled back and quote-unquote used as a “Training Facility and Logistics” for the National Guard, but I have also heard that it was abandoned by the Army and there was only a skeleton crew of security officers there. I spend much time as I was growing up at west branch state park which is not far from there and it was very common to see formations of multiple hueys, chinooks, blackhawks, and even sikorsky sky cranes moving in and out of there. even as late as 2000, (the last time I was there on a regular basis) I would see multiple, as many as 8 to 10 helicopters flying in very tight formation going into the base at very low level. So I hardly think that it’s inactive. According to ohiohistorycentral.org “Much of the site is now the Ohio National Guard’s Ravenna Training and Logistics Site, with the Ohio National Guard using the Ravenna Arsenal for training. Approximately 1,481 acres of the Ravenna Arsenal have been deemed environmentally contaminated and efforts to make the site safe for human use are underway at the start of the twenty-first century.” and according to wikipedia “The site is now used as a training facility for National Guard and Reserve units. As of 2006, it is a Superfund site and plans to burn some of the buildings at the site were being discussed. However, an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) work group has recently recommended that the Army not burn the buildings due to the high levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the paint[3]. The Army is now looking at alternatives to burning the buildings, but the buildings are also contaminated with explosives, which make traditional methods of demolition dangerous for workers.” I found these pics and audio report at http://www.wksu.org/news/story/18290 There are multiple possibilities for what happened, and an earthquake is certainly one of them, however, being someone who is (at least I feel) mildly intelligent, I can’t help but question and wonder what really happened. the latest news, I heard Friday (the 16th) on the local morning news that a middle school in Beloit, which is near Alliance and probably with in 10 to 15 miles of the arsenal, got shutdown and quarantined (with all the children in it), with no information being given to the parents for hours on why their children were locked in their school. The media said that over 30 kids had broken out in a seemingly unexplainable rash, and that in their best interest, the building was quarantined until they could discover the cause. The official cause given was “We don’t know, but it’s probably from cleaning agent used at the school”, this seems to be a very flimsy reason. If there was an accident at the arsenal, neighboring communities could be at risk, however because of the probable deplorable conditions condoned for over 60 years, it probably will never be admitted to, the civil liabilities alone would be staggering. I only present this information, so that possibly it sparks you into researching the situation (and others) yourself, because if we don’t then who will. As I said at the outset, I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s human nature to question the world around us, and if we didn’t we would never advance our cumulative knowledge, so always ask why!. My e-mail is anto [at] adelphia.net and feel free to e-mail me (or CreepyCleveland) with your ideas, opinions or any information you find about the arsenal or anything else you can’t explain. Thank you

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9 thoughts on “Earthquake near Cleveland? Or was it?

  1. Alright, from somone who regularly trains at the RTLS, I can tell you that there is NO SUCH THING as anything underground. In fact, the majority of the buildings are unusable because they have holes in the roof/floor. Also, those "dots" you see are buildings which are NOT below ground. They are indeed above ground. When the Arsenal was built for WWII efforts it was built in lines (IE, One building was for the casting, one building was for the fuse, etc.) so that it was efficient. Also, the only bunkers that are located at RTLS are above ground and have not been used since the Korean war when they were built to store mid/high grade bombs. The Arsenal during Vietnam was used to make Anti Tank and other explosive ordanace. It was never zoned for NBC tests because of the close proximity to houses. In fact, the only site that's zoned for NBC is known as the Proving Grounds in Aberdeen (http://www.apg.army.mil/apghome/sites/local/) where they test experimental weapons. Those explosions that you heard during the 1970s were Artillery Shells getting test fired (one out of every batch gets fired to ensure they work) The site is rarely inhabited with more than just that "skeleton security force" as well as those select guardsmen who have an AGR job, outside of the one weekend per month that National Guard RSP Soldiers conduct their monthly drill.

  2. yeah i can tell u that the rash the kids got that day was not from the arsenal, considering the fact that i live 2 minutes away from it. I do not recall hearing a boom, and army planes and helicopters fly by daily. Im not too much worried about the arsenal, its history, and just let it be. No one got fumes in their systems from anything, it was a rumor….

  3. I grew up in winham in the 70s and i also remember the bombs going off all the time shaking everything. It seems that there has been a lot of cases of cancer coming from around the arsenal over the years. I wonder if it is just coincedence.

  4. It is 10:15pm on Tuesday night and it's a common occurance to hear the c130's roar just over the tree tops here at Lake Milton. We are only about 12 minutes form the arsenal and we never felt or heard a thing back then. I actually came across this post looking for news on our friends house exploding in Beloit early this morning and thougth it was interesting. I have children in the West Branch School district at the senior high school which is located right next to the middle scholl and nobody att the high school got that rach…. Therfore I would have to believe that was not a wind born reaction otherwise everybody in that path of wind would have had similar symptoms. As far as the Arsenal…I don't know much about what goes on there but would like to know more. The c-130's are out of Vienna Airbase in Trumbull County and like I said commonly fly at low levels over our house training.

  5. 2 Points:
    ~ There is a deep fault within the craton approximately beneath Astabula, running roughly south.
    ~ Seismic reports from the "event" show an initial jolt and aftershocks, the initial jolt itself was only mild and therefore the aftershocks were not as detectable, if even detectable at all. Explosions of any type do not exhibit the same seismic patterns that earthquakes do in any way. The seismic reports from the event were from an earthquake.

    Cool find on the WKYC pics… I never heard about the opportunity to see the place, would have loved to get in on that trip!

    Cool blog!

  6. I lived in Windham, just a few blocks from the Arsenal back in the late 1970s. We often felt what seemed like earthquakes and it would usually rattle everything in the house. I remember one time that it was so bad, that it broke a window in the house and a few things inside the house. My dad called and complained to the arsenal and they had to pay to fix his window. Apparently what they were doing was blowing up the old explosives underground which is why it always felt like an earthquake.

  7. when i worked for a small security guard company in kent in the late 90's they were trying to subcontract non-DoD guards to man the gate. When the company i worked for was putting in a bid, they received a map of some of the area and a mildly detailed list of what was there. There are many underground buildings and also a very large network of underground railroads…. to say that nothing is there is almost comical. I have had 2 friends get in trouble for going in "restricted area" along lake ladue and near the fence of the base. When they went too close to restricted area in area of ladue, they were greeted by sheriff and helicopter above… amazing technology to know where someone is in the woods by a lake and respond that quick… to turn a blind eye towards weird things would be dumb of me…. I am a former member of the army and tested special military equipment in Natick MA; so I know firsthand what kind of weird things we are capable of… I know what I saw when the company was bidding,,,, a large amount of underground buildings and railroads…. some were mapped out and some were not…
    -g

  8. You sir are full of it-I can sompletely back up the other soldier's post. The tales of the black choppers and secret federal security teams with submachine guns are a flying crock of crap. I have been over every square mile of that facility and been in many of these supposed underground bunkers that ARENT UNDERGROUND! You were probably some GD P.O.G who adjusted a wire on a battery tester and now you sit there and claim you tested special military equipment! Someone who really did that for a job would not be online talking about it!And please I know what security company you are talking about-those guys couldn't get a contract to guard a damn mall and anyone that worked for them is some half-wit cop wannabe. People should be happy about activity in Ravenna-guess what-that means that Ohio soldiers are doing training in Ohio and dont have to be bused or flown on taxpayer dime to other states to do their ranges and MOB training.

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