 About how long does the tragedy take place?
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. Newspapers in the mountain states gave it a few inches on the front page; anything is news in late August. 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. By 16 September the landslip had crept down the Huerfano River past Cedarwood. Land west of the Fault was holding firm, though Denver had recorded several small tremors; everywhere east of the Fault, to almost twenty miles away, the now-familiar lurch and steady fall had already sent several thousand Coloradans scurrying for safety. They danced "like sand in a sieve"; dry, they boiled into rubble. Virtually all east-west land communication was suspended and the President declared a national emergency. Trinchera and Branson were totally evacuated, but even so the over-all death toll had risen above 1,000. Tremendous fissures opened up perpendicular to the Fault, and a general subsidence of the land was noticeable well into Kansas and Nebraska. The western borders of these states, and soon of the Dakotas and Oklahoma as well, were slowly sinking. On the actual scene of the disaster (or the scenes ; it is impossible to speak of anything this size in the singular) there was a horrifying confusion. Prairie and hill cracked open under intolerable strains as the land shuddered downward in gasps and leaps. South, it ripped past Roswell, New Mexico, and tore down the Pecos toward Texas.
 About three months total.
 About three months total.  Over the course of a month.  It all took place between September and October.  It's all over in a matter of hours.