Earthquake!

Kevin

Code Monkey
Staff member
If you are on the US East Coast, did you feel the tremors today around 2:00pm? It was an earthquake! A rare 5.9 quake hit the Virginia area and the tremors were felt along most of the Eastern coast. :eek:

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/usc0005ild.html

People are having different reactions; cell phone service in NY disrupted.

Earthquake shuts down Virginia nuclear plant

An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.8 struck near Washington, D.C., the U.S.Geological Survey said. The epicenter was in Mineral, Virginia.

The quake was felt in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; New York City and on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, where President Barack Obama is vacationing. Cell phone service has been disrupted in New York City part of which has been evacuated.

Traders in the New York Stock Exchange felt the shaking and shouted to each other, "Keep trading!" CNN's business correspondent Alison Kosick reported from the floor at 2:20 p.m. E.T.

"Everybody was told to take the stairs," Wolf Blitzer said, speaking live at 2 p.m. E.T. from CNN's D.C. bureau.

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.

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.
 
Not as bad as Christchurch in New Zealand...
Nobody said it was. :eek: The thing about the quake above was that it was a very rare event. For millions of people it was likely the first quake that they experienced ever and might be the only one.
 
Of course! I was merely pointing out how scary our one was.
Very.
Yeah, having an earthquake where it was is very rare. Hope everyone is OK and recovering fine!
 
Of course! I was merely pointing out how scary our one was.
Very.
You're in Christchurch? How is the recovery coming along? Everybody in the family OK?

I've seen pics from right after it took place and some of the damage seemed pretty bad.
 
It was really scary through the massive ones and all the aftershocks following. My family is fine although I did know three people who got killed, sadly. Our house is fine because we live just outside of Christchurch, but our school lost 7 buildings and a few of my friends lost their houses. What remains strong is our spirit though. Everyone's helping everyone out, and although we lose people, buildings, and our city looks like a pile of rubble, we keep going.
 
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