Mystery surrounds shaking homes in Newport

A Twin Cities community has a mystery on its hands. Homes in a neighborhood in Newport regularly shake and no one knows why.

The homes on 1st Avenue North, just north of 20th Street, look like they're on stable ground. But those who live inside are shaken up.

Crystal Oswald says, "I've noticed it for a couple months now."

She describes what happens. "You hear stuff shaking on your bed frames. You hear doors rattling in your kitchen, drawers shaking."

Oswald says she and six neighbors feel tremors in their homes at dinner time and then overnight at 1:30, 3:30, 4:30 and 5:30 a.m. for no more than 5 minutes, pretty much on a daily basis.

She says, "I had to put stoppers on my (kitchen cupboard) doors just because of the wood on wood rattling."

What's strange is that other folks, just a block away, feel nothing.

Theirs has never been a quiet neighborhood. Within blocks there is an industrial area, and also a busy freeway and very busy train tracks.

Oswald says, "We hear trains go by but it's not anything like that."

Some of these neighbors have lived here for decades. This rattling is accompanied by a different noise.

Oswald describes it as, "Kind of a like a bold, beating noise in the house."

Neighbors suspected construction on the Wakota Bridge nearby. But MN DOT says no one works on it overnight.

So could it be natural tremors?

Not according to Val Chandler, a geophysicist with the Minnesota Geological Survey. He says, "I kind of doubt that its' a natural earthquake."

He's heard of no recent seismic activity in the area.

There are other natural ways tremors can surface.

The homes are just blocks from the Mississippi River and Chandler says caves under river bluffs can collapse. But vibrations from that, or even a sinkhole, would be short-lived.

Chandler says, "I suspect it's just something mechanical doing it at some sort of large scale facility."He suggests perhaps a new industrial size furnace or trash compactor recently installed at a local business. The Newport city administrator, Brian Anderson tells us Newport Public Works has checked with local businesses, but no one knows what could be causing these homes to shake. It will continue to investigate.

Still, that leaves Oswald with no solid answers. She says, "It's just unexplainable right now."

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