News coming in about an earthquake near Washington DC.

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/23...d-c/?hpt=hp_t2

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0..._n_934244.html

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquak...sc0005ild.html

Hope your friends & family are safe and sound.

http://content.usatoday.com/communit...gton-dc-area/1

No reports of any damage so far.

First FB get's flooded with Jack Layton's Death, now I'm hearing earthquake updates......apparently things are shaking back in Ontario (no pun intended)

I never felt anything in Montreal.

5.8 is nothing though

Yep, that was a dud.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/24/us...ke.html?ref=us


Oops, just realized that this is a duplicate thread...not sure how to remove though!

I'm currently in Baltimore, and the earthquake was very, very strong. All of the walls and windows were shaking, it sounded like a train was rattling the entire house. Scary! Apparently, they evacuated the capital (30 miles south of here).

They evacuated the whole of Washington dc because of a 5.8?

Informed the mods. Should be merged with the other thread.

Makes me curious (although not curious enough to look it up... yet) about how often earthquakes hit that area. I mean, with the mountain ranges along the eastern States, it's obvious there were some massive ones at some point but in the last few million years, not so much?

So, I'll hazard to guess that perhaps the evacuations are because all those historical buildings are probably not so up on safety codes for earthquake hazard. Or maybe they are. I dunno.

This should help.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsus/

The depth was only 1km which is why it was so strong. There was a rather strong earthquake in CO last night, too, which makes me wonder if the New Madrid in southern MO is going to go sometime soon. Last time was in 1811-12 with 8.something. When that fault blows, it'll level most of the Mississippi Valley as few buildings in St Louis, Memphis, Chicago or KC are built to code for earthquakes of that magnitude. My dad used to participate in preparedness drills for keeping the lines of radio communications running in the event of that fault going and so I've been waiting, dreading, all my life for it to happen, grim as the drills were.

Glad you're OK. I saw one blurb that 3 spires on the National Cathedral had toppled, is that true?

Ontario Rocks

Photos are now emerging of the damage. I hope that a committee is assembled quickly to deal with this.



from The Daily What

Thanks for your concern! I have no idea about the national cathedral. I'm completely okay--just gave me bad flashbacks to when I lived in L.A. and was waiting for the big one. You are right about the depth of the quake making it feel much more powerful--it was felt in Quebec and even down in GA. In addition to the depth, apparently geology also plays a role in the seismic propagation: "[On] the East Coast you have this old hard, cold crust that does a lovely job of transmitting the waves," says Lucy Jones, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. "This large of an earthquake …. could definitely have been felt hundreds of miles away."

The reason for evacuating government buildings is that many of them are hundreds of years old (some with a large rotunda, like the capital) and were definitely not built to earthquake code. Honestly, I was more scared with this quake here in the NE than I ever was in L.A. because at least there's earthquake awareness there...

It's the strongest earthquake in the area since the 1850s!

I hope not! We're near St. Louis.

I have family there, I hope not either. I think about it every time I visit. I'm always surprised at how few locals even know the fault is there.

a friend of mine in DC actually spilled her martini ( thank gawd there was no ice involved !! )

she will be applying for federal assistance in the morning.