Stay safe guys!
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Earthquake Felt Across D.C. Region
Tuesday, Aug 23, 2011 | Updated 3:41 PM EDT
The Washington, D.C., region shook at about 1:50 p.m. Tuesday.
The rumbling was felt across Virginia, Maryland and the District.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the event was an earthquake, which registered 5.9 in magnitude and took place 3.7 miles below the surface.
The quake was 9 miles from Mineral, Va., 90 miles southwest of D.C. It lasted about 30-40 seconds.
Verizon Wireless says it has not experienced any damage to its system, but customers may have experienced problems because of a high volume of usage.
Ceiling tiles came down at Reagan National Airport. Flights can't leave or return. All flights are arriving and departing at Dulles international airport.
After early inspections, there are no reports of road or bridge damage.
DDOT reported some traffic light outages. People should remember to treat those intersections as four-way stop signs.
Metrorail will remain open, but riders should expect delays as trains will be running slower and tracks will be inspected, officials said. No damage has been reported. The Massachusetts Avenue entrance at Union Station was closed. The First Street entrance is open.
All Metrobus routes are operating with delays due to the traffic light outages and evacuation traffic.
All the monuments on the National Mall were evacuated.
Parts of the White House, the Pentagon, Homeland Security and the U.S. Capitol were evacuated. Light fixtures shook on the ceiling of the Capitol.
At the Pentagon in northern Virginia, a low rumbling built and built to the point that the building was shaking. People ran into the corridors of the government's biggest building and as the shaking continued there were shouts of "Evacuate! Evacuate!''
A broken water main at the Pentagon has considerable flooding, but that was the only damage reported. The water was shut of but wasn't expected to remain off long.
Something fell off the National Cathedral. Damage has been reported at another church in northwest D.C. and a school in northeast D.C.
NBC News reported tremors were felt as far away as Martha's Vineyard where the president is on vacation. It was felt on a golf course where Obama was starting a round, the AP reported. There have been reports of tremors felt in Raleigh, N.C.; Toronto, Canada; Boston, Mass.; and Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio.
Earlier today, there were reports of earthquakes in Ohio and parts of New York. A 5.3 magnitude quake was reported in California this morning.
The quake came a day after an earthquake in Colorado toppled groceries off shelves and caused minor damage to homes in the southern part of the state and in northern New Mexico. No injuries were reported as aftershocks continued Tuesday.
The North Anna nuclear power plant is located close to the epicenter of the quake. Two reactors were shut down at the Dominion Power-operated plant. The plant declared an "unusual event" -- the lowest stage of the emergency scale.
News4 meteorologist Doug Kammerer said residents should be ready for aftershocks, though not major ones.
Maryland state employees returned to the statehouse after an evacuation lasting roughly 30 minutes. Raquel Guillory, a spokeswoman for Gov. Martin O'Malley, said staff in a meeting on the second floor thought something was falling off the building, the Associated Press reported. Several staffers said they initially thought scaffolding around the statehouse dome, which is being repainted, had collapsed.
"We really felt like it was going to come through the ceiling at any second," said O'Malley spokesman Rick Abbruzzese.
In Charleston, W.Va., hundreds of workers left the state Capitol building and employees at other downtown office buildings were asked to leave temporarily.
"The whole building shook," said Jennifer Bundy, a spokeswoman for the state Supreme Court. "You could feel two different shakes. Everybody just kind of came out on their own."
In downtown Baltimore, the quake sent office workers into the streets, where lamp posts swayed slightly as they called family and friends to check in.
"People pouring out of buildings and onto the sidewalks and Into Farragut Park in downtown D.C. ...," tweeted Republican strategist Kevin Madden.
"did you feel earthquake in ny? It started in richmond va!" tweeted Arianna Huffington, president and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post Media Group.
Earthquakes of this magnitude are rare. Earlier this year, a 6.3-magnitude earthquake near the urban Christchurch, New Zealand, caused significant damage. The Virginia quake was in a much more rural area.
More updates as they become available.
Copyright Associated Press / NBC Washington
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Earthquake Shuts Down Virginia Nuclear Plan
An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.9 struck Tuesday afternoon near Washington, D.C., the U.S. Geological Survey said.
The epicenter was in Mineral, Virginia. The quake was four miles deep, according to the USGS. Did you feel it? Send CNN an iReport.
To get complete coverage and all the latest updates, click on CNN's main story here. View a CNN Open Story about the quake. CNN Open Story combines iReports with reports from CNNers across the globe on a map and timeline.
Update 3:36 p.m. ET: Terminal A at Washington Reagan National Airport has been evacuated because of an odor of gas, airport spokeswoman Courtney Mickalonis said. Initial sweeps of the building showed no major damage from the earthquake.
Light structural damage has been reported in Culpepper and Orange counties in Virginia, said Laura Southard of the state Emergency Operations Center. She said there have been no reports of injuries in Virginia.
Update 3:28 p.m. ET: The White House and adjacent buildings evacuated as a precaution following the earthquake have been given the all-clear, the U.S. Secret Service said. The FBI and Justice Department have also reopened evacuated buildings.
Update 3:25 p.m. ET: East Coast residents should be prepared to feel aftershocks from Tuesday's earthquake, a U.S. Geological Survey official said.
Update 3:22 p.m. ET: The North Anna nuclear power plant, located 20 miles from the epicenter, is shut down and in a safe condition, a company official and the Louisa County public information office report. There has been no release of nuclear material, Louisa County spokeswoman Amanda Reidelbach said.
Update 3:04 p.m. ET: All national monuments and parks in Washington are "stable but closed" following Tuesday's earthquake, a United States Park Police spokesman Sgt. David Schlosser said. A couple of minor injuries and some minor structural damage have been reported in Washington, following Tuesday's earthquake, according to Schlosser.
Part of the central tower of the National Cathedral, the highest point in Washington, was damaged, according to spokesman Richard Weinberg. "It looks like three of the pinnacles have broken off the central tower," Weinberg told CNN.
Update 3:02 p.m. ET: Amtrak is reporting service disruptions between Washington and Baltimore because of the earthquake, the company reported on Twitter.
Aftershocks are a concern, U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Lucy Jones told CNN. "People should be expecting (them), especially over the next hour or two," she said.
The quake was felt in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; New York City and on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, where President Barack Obama is vacationing. It's unknown if the president felt the quake.
The Pentagon has been evacuated, CNN's Barbara Starr reports. "When the building began shaking rather violently, hundreds of people began streaming out," she said, because many people thought that the building was under attack. Starr was standing in the Pentagon's press office when the roof started to shake.
Cell phone service has been disrupted in New York City, CNN learned within minutes of the quake.
Updated 2:47 p.m. ET: A "considerable amount" of water from a water pipe has flooded two corridors of the Pentagon, according to an announcement in the building. People who work in those areas are being asked to stay in their offices while workers try to repair the damage.
The National Cathedral in Washington is damaged, CNN has confirmed.
And Dominion Generation, which operates the North Anna nuclear power station in central Virginia a few miles from the epicenter of the earthquake, is trying to reach operational staff at the plant, according to a company spokesman. Landlines to the plant appear to be down.
Shortly after the quake struck, traders in the New York Stock Exchange also felt the quake and shouted to each other, "Keep trading!" CNN's business correspondent Alison Kosik reported from the floor at 2:20 p.m. E.T.
Twitter traffic suggests the quake was felt all over the East Coast.
In Philadelphia, HunterPence3 tweeted, "Wow Earthquake just shook the entire locker room!"
In Cleveland, "tribeinsider" wrote "I'm no expert but i think we just had an earthquake here."
And even in Toronto, Canada, tweets said that the shaking could be felt for minutes.
Pete Krech, who works at a business in Fredericksburg, Virginia, likened the sensation to being on a jolting amusement ride. "I was receiving a supply truck," said Krech, store manager at Mattress Warehouse of Fredericksburg, south of Washington. "I felt a vibration under my feet."
Brendan Wein, a sales representative at Hoffman Nursery in Roxboro, North Carolina, said he thought there was a helicopter flying above his work building. "I was literally shaking in my chair," he said.
CNN iReporter Jeff Yapalater said he was in his backyard in New York's Long Island when the earthquake hit. "Suddenly I felt this light swaying of the Earth. I'd never felt that before, so I thought maybe I was experiencing vertigo for a moment, and it lasted maybe 30 seconds ... We're feeling this really far away!" he wrote.
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Post by: CNN's
Ashley Fantz, The CNN Wire Filed under: District of Columbia ' Earthquake ' Natural Disasters ' Virginia |
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