Fracking Fact-Finding Mission

North Texas residents rattled by earthquakes demand answers in Austin

One North Texas mayor is on a mission to find out what is literally tearing his town apart. Beginning in November 2013, the town of Azle saw its earthquake counter jump from zero to 27 in the span of six months.

"If I could sum up our experience in one word it would be frustration," Azle mayor Alan Brundrett said at a May 12 meeting in Austin before the Energy Resources Subcommittee on Seismic Activity.

The committee, which was formed in light of the recent rash of quakes, has been tasked with determining if fracking wells impact seismic activity.

"It is time to step up and confirm once and for all if disposal wells are causing these quakes and determine why," Azle mayor Alan Brundrett said.

"We are concerned for the safety and well-being of our community," Brundrett said, adding that the Azle school district has started conducting earthquake drills for the first time in its history.

Although the first reported earthquake in Texas occurred in 1882, seismic activity in the Lone Star State was once a rarity. Up until 2010, Texas averaged about one or two earthquakes every decade. But since 2010, there have been over 300 recorded earthquakes in the Lone Star State.

No one has definitively said if Texas' increase in hydraulic fracturing of oil wells, commonly called fracking, is to blame, but the parallel timeline has raised a number of concerns. Hydraulic fracking involves injecting the ground with a high pressure stream of water and chemicals in order to release natural gas that's deep inside the earth.

Azle is home to about 11,000 people, and the town actually has an ordinance prohibiting fracking disposal wells. But nearby towns have no such regulations, and wells just outside the Azle's city limits are free to operate.

"Texas has always been a leader in the energy field. It is now time to lead again. It is time to step up and confirm once and for all if disposal wells are causing these quakes and determine why," Brundrett said.

Linda Stokes, the mayor of nearby Reno, Texas, also demanded answers at the hearing. "The industry's right to profit doesn't suppress our right as citizens to the quality of life that we know. They do not get to move in, tear us up and shake us apart without consequences," Stokes said.

To aid in the search for definitive answers, Stokes asked that data on disposal wells be recorded daily and subject to open records requests. Currently, data on chemicals and pressure levels in the wells are compiled monthly and released annually to the Texas Railroad Commission in November. That means the data on the sudden spike in earthquakes from November 2013 won't be available until November 2014.

Rep. Phil King (R-Weatherford) assured a packed crowd that their voices would be heard. "There certainly is seismic activity in the area, and it certainly is a new phenomenon."

He said the state of Texas was committed to doing "whatever is necessary" to get to the bottom of the increase in earthquakes.

"Even though it seems like a long time ago since all this started six months ago, in state bureaucracy timelines, this is really fast to get here," King said. "This is not just being brushed under the table. It is not something that we are just ignoring."

Fracking concerns have swept the state of Texas in recent years. In 2013, Dallas passed a controversial ordinance effectively banning the practice within city limits. In response, Trinity East Energy filed suit against the city in 2014 for breach of contract and fraud.

Although studies have examined fracking's impact on North Texas ozone levels and childhood cancer rates, researchers have yet to tackle the relationship between fracking and seismic activity until now.

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TALL TALES

Missing giraffe turns into Texas Hill Country's tallest mystery

Real Country Animal Rescue/ Facebook

Where can Gracie be?

UPDATE 6-26-2026: Gracie has been found about four miles south of the Cedar Hollow Ranch, according to a Facebook update from Real County Animal Rescue. Ranch manager Vic Jones has assembled a team to safely bring the wandering giraffe home.

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A giraffe named Gracie is missing in Texas, and the search for her has become a tall order.

Gracie, who is about 3 years old, has been missing for nearly two weeks after escaping her enclosure at Cedar Hollow Ranch in the Texas Hill Country, said Vic Jones, who owns the remote property about 100 miles west of San Antonio. He said Wednesday, June 24 that Gracie had wandered into a part of the privately owned preserve that other giraffes previously avoided.

Jones said he has sent up helicopters to look for Gracie, a few sightings have trickled in, and a $5,000 reward is on the table.

But the giraffe, which stands roughly the height of a tree, hasn't turned up.

“She wound up going up and feeding in an area on the hillside and the rocky ledges that none of the other giraffes had ever gone on before,” Jones said. “And when she came down off of there, she came down on the wrong side of the gate.”

The ranch is in rural Real County, where its roughly 2,700 residents were put on alert to be on the lookout for a missing giraffe. Jones said the search area is extremely remote, and the likelihood of Gracie encountering any humans is low.

“People are not in danger of her because she’s not around people,” Jones said. 'She’s out in very, very rough, heavily wooded lands."

The Texas Hill Country has one of the largest concentrations of exotic captive animals in the country. Real County Sheriff Nathan Johnson said the mild climate and rugged terrain seems to serve as a good stand-in for most of the animals' native African environments.

He rattled off a list of animals that have gone missing over the years, especially after floods, but said this was his first giraffe.

“I’ve had wildebeests, I've had water buffalo, I've had monkeys, I’ve had zebras, all go missing,” Johnson said. “Sometimes we recover them, and sometimes we don’t.”

While the middle of Texas is not a giraffe's native environment, Jones said Gracie should be able to find plenty of leaves and other vegetation to eat. He said other animals were not likely to bother her.

Jones said he initially had helicopters searching an area of about 7,500 acres (3,000 hectares) with no luck. A few days later, there was a report that Gracie was spotted to the south.

But by the time they could search the area, Jones said, she was already gone.

“We're always two three days late for where the information is coming from, so that makes it tough,” Jones said.

hill country giraffes animals