Multiple Earthquakes Ruining Payne County Man's Home

Oklahoma is on track to hit more than 5,000 earthquakes before the end of 2014 and Pawnee and surrounding communities have been at the epicenter of close to 500 of them.

One man said he lives directly on a fault line and the quakes are ruining his home. We had a firsthand experience with that while we were there.

Not minutes after we arrived at Mark Chrismon's property we heard a loud bang and the building shook. We had just experienced an earthquake that registered at 3.1.

That's a normal thing for Chrismon, so now he's teaming up with OSU to monitor the activity to get a better understanding of why it's happening.

"That primary wave is the front of this thing, that's what you're gonna feel, that's the whack you get. The roaring that you get after that is the secondary wave," Chrismon said.

The USGS rated the quake a 3.1, and Chrismon's seismograph - installed by a researcher with OSU - recorded it all.

Research on his property began a few months ago, since he has experienced such regular quake activity.

He said the constant shaking is taking its toll.

"It's not good. You can't sleep. How would you like to have one of those in the middle of the night at 2:00 in the morning, it happens all the time,” Chrismon said.

Living so close to a fault line, Chrismon said he has felt close to 200 of the quakes in the three years and has documented all of them. He took us inside his home for a tour of the damage as cracks are growing on his ceiling and along his fireplace.

“It goes the whole way of the living room, and there it is right there, you can see it right there,” he said. “The price of property is gonna go down. Anybody that's got a rock or a brick house or a slab floor is gonna suffer big time. The property value has to go down now."

OSU reports the quake we felt Tuesday hit just two miles from us, and Chrismon continued to show us how previous events have ripped apart his driveway and brick home.

The arguments over what is causing the increase in earthquake activity continues, but the homeowner is confident he knows the answer.

“It is all manmade, every bit if it," he said.

Researcher, Tim Sickbert from OSU, said his main goal is to research the frequency of Oklahoma earthquakes and the direction in which the waves travel.