Air, train traffic disrupted over wide area; some feared another 9/11
NBC, msnbc.com and news services
updated 49 minutes ago 2011-08-24T00:58:44
WASHINGTON — An earthquake in central Virginia was felt across much of the East Coast on Tuesday, causing light damage and forcing hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate buildings in New York, Washington and other cities.
No tsunami warning was issued, but air and train traffic was disrupted across the Northeast and mid-Atlantic.
In the Washington area, parts of the Pentagon, White House and Capitol were among the areas evacuated for several hours. All memorials and monuments on the National Mall were evacuated and closed for inspections.
Around 7:30 p.m. EST, the National Park Service reopened the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials to the public, but officials decided to keep the Washington Monument closed. After a secondary inspection, NPS officials discovered some cracking in the stones near the top of the monument. Structural engineers will be brought in to evaluate the cracks.
At the Pentagon, a low rumbling built and built to the point that the building shook. People ran into the corridors of the government's biggest building and as the shaking continued there were shouts of "Evacuate! Evacuate!"
NBC Pentagon corresponent Jim Miklaszewski said the rumbling was eerily similar to the impact on Sept. 11, 2001, when al-Qaida terrorists flew a jetliner into the Pentagon. "I, like many other people here, thought 'Oh my God, we've been hit again.'"
The quake ruptured a water pipe inside the Pentagon, flooding parts of two floors.
Initial damage reports from Washington included plaster falling off the Capitol building and three pinnacles falling off the 30-story-tall central tower at the National Cathedral.
There were no reports of deaths or serious injuries.
Centered some 90 miles south of the nation's capital, the quake was a magnitude 5.8, the U.S. Geological Survey said Tuesday after an earlier estimate of 5.9.
Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP
One of the National Cathedral spires damaged in the quake is seen at left.
The quake was tied for third strongest along the East Coast in recorded history, USGS records show. Charleston, S.C., was hit by a 7.3 in 1886 and Giles County, Va., saw a 5.9 in 1897. A 5.8 quake struck New York state in 1944.
Several hours after the first earthquake, a 4.2 magnitude aftershock hit in Mineral, Va., just after 8 p.m., EST, according to USGS. Mineral is around 35 miles northwest of Richmond. NBC News' Tom Costello reported that a low rumble was heard as the aftershock occurred.
Two nuclear reactors near the epicenter were taken offline as a precaution, officials said. No damage was reported at either.
Dominion Resources Inc said its 1,806-megawatt North Anna nuclear station in Virginia was designed to withstand a 6.2 magnitude earthquake, a spokesman told Reuters.
At the U.S. Capitol, light fixtures swung and the building shook for about 15 seconds while the tremor hit, NBC News reported.
"I thought at first somebody was shaking my chair and then I thought maybe it was a bomb," said Senate aide Wendy Oscarson-Kirchner.
At Reagan National Airport outside Washington, ceiling tiles fell during a few seconds of shaking. All flights were put on hold and one terminal was evacuated due to a gas smell.
Children are evacuated from the Jacob K. Javits Federal building in New York on Tuesday after the earthquake.
In New York City, NBC reported debris fell from the attorney general's office, causing a brief panic as people ran from the area.
Quake interrupts Manhattan for a New York minute
Airport towers and government buildings in New York, including City Hall, were evacuated. The 26-story federal courthouse in lower Manhattan began swaying and hundreds of people were seen leaving the building.
Advertise | AdChoicesAdvertise | AdChoices
Advertise | AdChoices
.Flights from the New York area's John F. Kennedy and Newark airports were delayed while authorities inspected control towers and runways. Philadelphia's airport also halted flights for inspections.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg reported "no reports of significant damage or injuries in New York City at this time."
A mild tremor was even felt by NBC reporters with President Barack Obama during his vacation on Martha's Vineyard, an island off Massachusetts.
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 Ohio, office buildings swayed in Columbus and Cincinnati, and the press box at the Cleveland Indians' Progressive Field shook. At least one building near the Statehouse was evacuated in downtown Columbus.
In downtown Baltimore, Md., the quake sent office workers into the streets, where lamp posts swayed slightly as they called family and friends to check in.
Amtrak reported train service along the Northeast Corridor between Baltimore and Washington, was operating at reduced speeds as crews inspected the lines.
More about the quake at breakingnews.com
The earthquake’s epicenter was near Mineral, Va., the USGS reported. It struck at 1:51 p.m. ET.
In Mineral, the roof of the town hall collapsed in the quake.
East Coast earthquakes are far less common than in the West, but they tend to be felt over a broad area. That's because the crust is not as mangled and fractured, allowing seismic waves to travel without interruption.
"The waves are able to reverberate and travel pretty happily out for miles," said USGS seismologist Susan Hough.
At NBC's Washington bureau, it took a few seconds for staffers to realize what was going on, with people asking one another if it was an earthquake.
No alarms sounded but people then began rushing out, congregating in front of the building as they would for a fire drill.
PhotoBlog: Quake felt across East
Outside the building, people tried making calls, but no one could get service.
Next door, staffers for the Department of Homeland Security evacuated their building.
"I was probably in three earthquakes in Los Angeles," said NBC news producer Mark Miano, "and this was by far the strongest I’ve ever felt."
Small quake has big reach
The D.C. area last felt an earthquake on July 16, 2010, when a 3.6 magnitude quake struck.
The USGS said the quake was not related to one in Colorado on Monday.
The Associated Press, Reuters as well as NBC's Jim Miklaszewski and msnbc.com's Kara Kearns contributed to this report.
____________
Small quake has big reach
Nicholas Kamm / AFP / Getty Images
People stand in a square outside the courthouse after an earthquake was felt in New York Tuesday, causing buildings to be evacuated. The Pentagon, the U.S. Capitol and Union Station in the nation's capital were all evacuated after the 5.9-magnitude quake, which was shallow with its epicenter only 0.6 miles (one kilometer) underground.
By John Roach
A magnitude-5.8 earthquake in Virginia Tuesday afternoon was felt across the U.S. East Coast, shaking offices and nerves from Washington D.C. to New York City and as far south as Chapel Hill, North Carolina. There are even reports of shaking as far west as Columbus, Ohio, and out on Martha's Vineyard.
That's a whole lot of shaking for what amounts to a medium-sized quake. The reason for its reach, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, is geology of the East Coast.
"The reason an earthquake in the high 5s is felt so far away is that it occurred in an area … where the bedrock is solid, it's not really fractured or broken up by faults the way it would be, say, in California," Peter Powers, a geophysicist with the survey, told me today.
The seismic energy in areas with stable bedrock — "stable continental craton" in geophysics speak — can travel much farther than it can when broken up by young faults.
"Seismic energy attenuates very slowly on the East Coast," Powers said. "On the West Coast it attenuates much more rapidly because the bedrock is fractured and faulted and much more variable in its composition than on the East Coast."
The survey notes that earthquakes in the central and eastern U.S. are typically felt over a much broader region than those in the Western U.S., sometimes an area as much as ten time larger than similar magnitude earthquake on the West Coast.
"A magnitude 5.5 eastern U.S. earthquake usually can be felt as far as 300 miles from where it occurred, and sometimes causes damage as far away as 25 miles," the agency notes on its website.
Early reports indicated the depth of the earthquake is also quite shallow — just 3.7 miles down in the Earth's crust. Powers said this would likely be revised deeper as time goes by and the data is further analyzed, but depth here isn't much of a factor in the shaking.
The earthquake today on the East Coast, Powers said, was large enough to be felt over a large area no matter if its depth is ultimately determined to be 3 miles or 15 miles deep. "At that point, the depth really isn't much of a factor."
Depth can be a factor
In other regions, however, depth of an earthquake can make a difference.
Generally, the closer the epicenter of an earthquake is to the surface, the stronger the shaking on the surface and the more damage they cause, no matter what their size.
Conversely, when earthquakes rupture deeper in the crust — they can rupture up to 500 miles deep — more energy is lost as it races to the surface.
That's one reason why some relatively strong earthquakes, originating deep in the crust, cause little damage on the surface whereas some seemingly small earthquakes can cause massive damage.
The 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti in January 2010 was 8.1 miles deep. The relatively shallow depth combined with subpar construction in Haiti caused massive damage there.
A pair of minor earthquakes in Spain this May ruptured just over half a mile below the ground, causing several deaths and damaging buildings in a part of the world with a tame seismic history.
The 9.0 magnitude earthquake hit Japan on March 11 began at a depth of 19.9 miles. Though devastating, it could have been worse had it been even shallower — and had Japan's infrastructure not been among some of the most earthquake ready in the world.
John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).
NBC's Tom Costello reports from the earthquake epicenter in Mineral, Va., where the roof of the town hall collapsed in the quake.
___________
Các anh chị nghĩ gì qua những bài viết về Động Đất vừa xảy ra ở Mỹ qua những tin tức vừa được loan tải trên thế giới ?
Xin cầu nguyện cho nước Mỹ và dân Mỹ được bình an .
Chân thành cám ơn Quý Anh Chị ghé thăm "conbenho Nguyễn Hoài Trang Blog"
Xin được lắng nghe ý kiến chia sẻ của Quý Anh Chị trực tiếp tại Diễn Đàn Paltalk: 1Latdo Tapdoan Vietgian CSVN Phanquoc Bannuoc .
Kính chúc Sức Khỏe Quý Anh Chị .
conbenho
Tiểu Muội quantu
Nguyễn Hoài Trang
24082011
___________
CSVN là TỘI ÁC
Bao che, dung dưỡng TỘI ÁC là đồng lõa với TỘI ÁC
No comments:
Post a Comment