Pull the USGS catalog for Oklahoma and the shape of the last fifteen years is hard to miss. In 2015 the region recorded 888 earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater. In 2025 it recorded six. Through the first seven months of 2026, eight.
That’s a hundredfold swing inside a decade, and it explains why earthquake coverage is a live question in some Oklahoma households and a forgotten one in others — often the same household, ten years apart.
What the Catalog Shows
These counts come from the USGS earthquake catalog, queried across a box covering Oklahoma — roughly 33.6° to 37.0° north and 94.4° to 103.1° west, which picks up a little of the neighboring states along the edges. Magnitude 3.0 is the rough threshold where people start feeling it indoors.
The run: 20 in 2009, 63 by 2011, 103 in 2013, then 586 in 2014 and 888 in 2015. The decline was nearly as steep — 272 by 2017, 57 by 2019, and 15 to 25 a year since 2022. Across the whole stretch since 2009, the region logged 102 earthquakes of magnitude 4.0 or greater and five in Oklahoma at magnitude 5.0 or greater. The largest was the M5.8 near Pawnee on September 3, 2016, which remains the strongest earthquake ever recorded in the state. The M5.7 near Prague in November 2011 and an M5.1 near Prague in February 2024 are on the same short list.
The connection between wastewater injection volumes and the surge has been studied heavily, and the timing of the decline tracks with disposal-well regulation. We’re an insurance agency, not a seismology department, so we’ll leave the mechanism to the Oklahoma Geological Survey and stick to the paperwork side.
The Paperwork Side
The Oklahoma Insurance Department states it about as plainly as a state agency states anything: a standard homeowner’s policy does not cover earthquake damage. Coverage is available as an endorsement added to a homeowners policy or as a stand-alone policy, and it has to be bought on purpose.
Three things about how it’s typically written surprise people.
The deductible isn’t a dollar amount. OID’s own consumer page puts a warning in italics about this: earthquake deductibles are a percentage of the insured value of the home, not the $500 or $1,000 people are used to. On a house insured for $350,000, a 5 percent deductible is $17,500 before anything pays. The department’s summary of the coverage is blunt — it’s for catastrophic loss, not minor repairs.
Brick veneer is commonly excluded. OID lists masonry and brick veneer among the most common exclusions. Look down almost any street in Edmond, Moore, or Deer Creek and consider what most of these houses are faced with. That is the single most important unflattering fact in this article, and anyone selling this coverage who skips past it isn’t doing the job.
You can’t buy it during the shaking. Because of aftershocks, insurers may impose a waiting period of anywhere from 72 hours to 60 days after an earthquake before new coverage takes effect. The decision has to be made in a quiet stretch — a stretch that, per the catalog above, is exactly what Oklahoma has been in for four years.
The Induced-Seismicity Question
There’s one more wrinkle specific to this state. Oklahoma’s earthquakes have been widely linked to oil and gas wastewater disposal, and OID advises consumers shopping for coverage to ask their agent to confirm whether man-made earthquakes tied to oil and gas activity are addressed — because, in the department’s words, it depends on the policy language.
That’s the whole lesson of this article compressed into one sentence. The catalog tells you what the ground has been doing. The declarations page and the form tell you what happens if it does it again, and your policy is the thing that answers it.
If you’ve never asked what your homeowners policy says about earthquake, it’s a two-minute conversation. Learn about our home insurance services or call (405) 861-8500 and we’ll read the form with you.
This article is general information about how coverage typically works, not advice about your specific situation. Policy language — not website descriptions — determines coverage, and your policy is the only thing that says what you have.
