 What is most significant about the earthquake that happens?
It has happened a hundred times in the long history of Earth—and, sooner or later, will happen again! It was still a matter of academic interest when in the late '40s geologists speculated on the relationship between the Kiowa Fault and the Conchas Fault farther south, in New Mexico, and which followed the Pecos as far south as Texas. Not even in the Rockies could anyone remember a series of rock slides as bad as this. Only Joseph Schwartzberg, head geographer of the Department of the Interior, wondered if the disturbance might not be a settling of the Kiowa Fault. The idea was not nearly so exciting as a volcano, even a lava-less one, and you couldn't draw a very dramatic picture of it. To excuse the other geologists, it must be said that the Kiowa Fault had never acted up before. As the tremors grew bigger, along with the affected area, as several towns including Edison were shaken to pieces by incredible earthquakes, whole bus- and plane-loads of geologists set out for Colorado, without even waiting for their university and government department to approve budgets. They found themselves on the scene of what was fast becoming the most violent and widespread earthquake North America—probably the world—has ever seen in historic times. To describe it in the simplest terms, land east of the Fault was settling, and at a precipitous rate. East, where sharp reports and muffled wheezes told of continued buckling and dropping, the earth trembled downward.
 It became a national tragedy, affecting most of the country.
 It proved that the dust volcano was alive.  It proved Schwartzberg's theory?  It became a national tragedy, affecting most of the country.  It happened quickly and suddenly.