East Coast Quake

The thing that scares me the most is manhattan is so unstable with all these tunnels under our feet. I dont think I'll be taking the subway for a day or two just to feel safe

Well, the bright side to all of this is that if the East Coast decides that its buildings need a seismic retrofit, it'll create a lot of construction jobs.

Actually, Virginia is pretty much a disaster zone. In the US, the West Coast gets earthquakes and wild fires, the south gets flooding, the midwest gets tornados, the south east gets hurricanes. In Central Virginia, we get all of the above, but usually on a smaller scale.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frosty_Femme I said "ur" which is not a word. It's a sound dumb people make when you ask them to spell out "you are".

Raleigh, NC here. Can't beat an earthquake as an alarm clock. Not violent or anything, but the bed rumbling was enough to wake me up. Not good since I didn't get off work till 8 a.m.

Southern Ontario shook for a good 15 seconds. My lovely spouse was shocked that I hadn't noticed at work because the the house rattled badly.

I was on a trial when someone said, "I just felt a mini-quake. My house shook." Pretty soon other people in the league were chiming in that they felt that 'mini-quake' across several states. Hope everyone on the East Coast is alright!

Poseidon is angry. . . There was also a quake in Colorado.

Philadelphia, here.

I was at work, just about to go on break when the quake struck, and my co-workers and I felt it. At first people thought as individuals "Who's rocking my desk?", until they realized everyone arond them was shaking, too. Then tweets from outside the building came on their phones about people feeling it. Nothing fell over where I was, but we certainly felt it. There wasn't any official order to evacuate the building, but many people decided not to take any chances, my department's boss among them, so we went home about an hour early.

But at any rate, I'm still alive and well.

Two hours after today's shaker, the worst in this area since at least 1897, my company sends out "what to do in case of an Earthquake" guidance. I'll keep that in mind for the next one.

I'm still here in Richmond, VA

Blacksburg VA here.

I thought the wifey had overloaded the washer again when my desk started to rock back and forth. It dissipated rapidly and being half-asleep I didn't think much of it. Then I quickly started getting VT Alerts reporting the event. If one good thing came from the 4/16 shootings is the fire it lit under VT administration to get an rapid response emergency warning system up and running el pronto. Unlikely there was much in the way of damage at this distance but all the schools are being inspected this evening just to be sure.

Know a coupla DCers who were evacuated after their buildings were discovered to have suffered minor but concern-causing damage.

Atlanta, Georgia (right smack downtown). I didn't feel a thing, and was blissfully ignorant of it until I read about it on Slashdot a little while ago. My cousin is ~20 miles from the epicenter, and she told us that they definitely felt it and it was freaky, but no one was injured and there was zero damage. CNN showed a house that had a collapsed chimney.

I do hope everyone is okay, latest reports I've read indicate no injuries and minimal damage. All-in-all, I think it was noteworthy and interesting, but not terribly earth-shatte— um... serious.

I napped through it, which is no fun in my opinion. (Near Toronto, Ontario in my case)

I work in Herndon, Virginia (a hop,skip from DC) and it was the craziest thing when it hit. I was hosting a meeting in my office when the building shook 3 times and gravel spilled off the roof. We evacuated and were left outside for about 40 minutes before being told to go home (Hubby and I live in Maryland so it was a long ways for me to get home!). We have no cell phone service but internet's on (and hubby just came home safe from his job in Bethesda just a little bit ago).


I have to remind my west coast folks who are laughing at our overreaction that we, the East Coasters, have nothing to fear from the quake itself. We have reason to fear our building codes. Our structures aren't built to withstand an earthquake - and I'm more than sure a number of our old buildings will show where the builders cut corners after this. We have minor reports of walls, trees and telephone polls collapsing, spires at National Cathedral breaking off, and slight particles of rubble falling off the Washington National Monument (its not leaning though despite the Twitter sham). There's already photos floating about of the wall that collapsed on cars over by Tyson's Corner, VA.


Thankfully this wasn't as bad as it could have been but there's still reason to be nervous that in a couple days or weeks, a weakened building structure might actually collapse. For those who live in the area, just be vigilant the next couple days. For those outside the area who might still be laughing at our overreaction, just remember: not only have most of us never lived through this before, but we really don't have safe and sturdy buildings like others might. And the power DID go out at our two local VA nuclear reactors...... they're running on back-up generators currently. So lets count our blessings and be glad this isn't a secondary catastrophe on the scale of Japan.


Hopefully everyone makes it home safe tonight. I saw two accidents on I-270 going home but nothing too serious. Its gonna be a long and slow ride home for some regardless so hang in there the best you can.


Hugs,

Rubberlad