Many Kansans were hitting the roadways for Labor Day holiday events because of the three-day weekend the calendar had arranged. Locally, lakes and park areas were crowded despite the heat.

Labor Day traditionally inaugurated the political season in Kansas and candidates all over the state were using Labor Day events to try to garner votes.

The heat wave in August had led to an abnormal number of local arrests for domestic violence and the Women’s Transitional Care Services shelter here had been kept unusually busy.

Kansas University seismologists said that earthquake monitoring devices such as the one at KU regularly registered underground “shifting” in many locales but that most of them were not the type to cause any shaking homes, bent rails or yawning fissures. KU was a major site for studying such activity in Kansas and Nebraska and Don Steeples headed up the operation as chief of geophysics and geochemistry.