Magnitude-5.8 quake rocks East Coast

By Douglas Stanglin, USA TODAY

Updated <1m ago

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By J. Scott Applewhite, AP

A magnitude-5.8 quake centered in Virginia rocked the East Coast, with tremors felt as far south as North Carolina, as far north as Buffalo and Boston, and as far west as Detroit.

Did you feel the tremors? Share your stories and photos with our reporters at debrown@usatoday.com.

Update at 3:36 p.m. ET: LaGuardia and JFK airports, which were shut down after the quake, have resumed service, MSNBC reports. The passenger rail service AMTRAK reports that it is reducing the speed of trains between Baltimore and Washington after the quake.

Update at 3:28 p.m. ET: USA TODAY's Kevin Johnson, reporting from downtown Washington, says the quake knocked out traffic lights downtown, snarling traffic as fire trucks and other emergency vehicles -- sirens blaring -- snaked through the confusion. The sidewalks teemed with anxious office workers who fled or were ordered to leave their buildings.

At the Grand Hyatt Hotel, uniformed cooks, waiters, barristas and room maids poured onto 10th Street. Many of them had cellphones pressed to their ears and looked skyward as if concerned about the integrity of the hotel towering above. "I thought I was fainting or something with the ground moving like it was,'' said bellman Ted Mesfin, 54. "Flatscreen TVs and dressers were shaking in the (guest) rooms. People thought the whole building was coming down.''

Update at 3:21 p.m. ET: Federal officials say two nuclear reactors at the North Anna Power Station in Louisa County, Va., near the epicenter of the quake, were automatically taken off line by safety systems around the time it struck, the Associated Press reports.

The Dominion-operated power plant is being run off of four emergency diesel generators, which supply power for critical safety equipment.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Roger Hannah says the agency was not immediately aware of any damage at nuclear power plants in the Southeast. The NRC and Dominion are sending people to inspect the site.

LIVE: Washington area coverage from WUSA

Update at 3:13 p.m. ET: Alesha Williams Boyd of the Asbury Park Press, took some soundings of people's reaction in her area and got this reaction: "I thought a cat was under my recliner," says Pat Dolan of Lakewood, N.J. "My chair was moving." The feeling was so odd Dolan woke her brother, who'd felt nothing and "thought I was crazy," Dolan says. "I insisted my chair was rocking side to side," Dolan said. "I thought it was cool but spooky."

Update at 3:08 p.m. ET:

USA TODAY's Kevin McCoy, who was covering the Dominque Strauss-Kahn hearing in New York, says the quake hit just as Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr. was starting a news conference. Police and court officers immediately evacuated the building.

Sonia Spence, a data transcriber for the U.S. Department of Citizenship and Immigration Services, says she had just returned to her desk on the fourth floor of 26 Federal Plaza when the building began to sway. "I thought, 'What could be shaking the building like this?' My first thought was a terrorist." Spence, a legally blind Bronx resident, said she dropped her purse which contained her cellphone, hurrying downstairs and outside.

Update at 3:06 p.m. ET: USA TODAY's Melanie Eversley reports that organizers for Sunday's planned dedication on the National Mall for the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial say the National Park Service is performing required safety checks and is monitoring the situation. They say nothing on the site has been disturbed.

Update at 3:04 p.m. ET: The State Department building in the Foggy Bottom area of Washington has been evacuated, public affairs specialist Urenia Young says in an e-mail. "We are out of the building," she writes

Update at 3:01 p.m. ET:

USA TODAY's Dan Vergano sent us this file:

"Central Virginia does get its share of minor earthquakes, but an earthquake of this size on the East Coast is certainly very unusual," says seismologist Karen Fischer of Brown University.

Virginia is not on an active earthquake fault and is roughly in the middle of the North American continental crustal plate, she says. But it has residual fault scars left over from 200 million to 300 million years ago, when it was an earthquake zone, at the time when the Atlantic Ocean rifted apart from Europe. "We are just seeing pressure build up and release on those scars," Fischer says. "There is a lot of debate on exactly what is going on down there and exactly how quakes this big happen in this kind of crustal zone."

Because the crust under the East Coast is colder and firmer than the West Coast, shocks travel more efficiently through it, accounting for the widely felt shaking.

"One lesson of this quake is that building codes will likely need to be revisited on the East Coast," Fischer says. "Because we are not as conscious of earthquakes here as the West Coast, and we will have to see about structural damage to buildings, although I have not heard any damage reports so far."

Update at 2:53 p.m. ET: MSNBC reports that the quake has caused flight delays at a number of airports, including JFK, Newark, Washington National, Washington Dulles and Philadelphia.

Update at 2:51 p.m. ET: Verizon Wireless and AT&T say their networks were congested as the quake sent people scrambling for the phones, the Associated Press reports.

Verizon Wireless spokesman Tom Pica says there has been no damage to the company's equipment. He says the crush of phone calls made it hard for some customers to get through for about 20 minutes after the quake. That has since began to clear, he says. Sprint says some customers may experience delays.

Update at 2:48 p.m. ET: Halley Pack, 24, a paralegal, was putting on her sneakers in the basement-level gym of her office building in downtown Washington when the shaking started. She said she didn't realize that it was an earthquake at first, USA TODAY's Fredreka Schouten reports. "I've never been in an earthquake before," she said, standing in her exercise clothes outside her office building at 2:20 p.m. "I thought something was wrong with me, like I had a headache."

Outside, dozens of office workers milled about, comparing notes and trying to reach friends and family members on their mobile phones.

Pack's colleague Caitlin Shea, 22, said she was at her desk when the earthquake struck. "The filing cabinets started shaking. I thought they would topple on us."

She was nervous about re-entering the 12-story building where they work. "I'm afraid of aftershocks," she said.

Update at 2:40 p.m. ET: USA TODAY's Dan Vergano reports that the quake, described as medium-sized, could be felt as far north as Ottawa, Canada. In New York, the Holland Tunnel closed, forcing drivers to back out into Manhattan. In Washington, numerous public buildings were evacuated, including the Pentagon, the Capitol and the Homeland Security Department, as well as all monuments and malls.

Update at 2:36 p.m. ET: The Associated Press quotes the U.S. Weather Service as saying no tsunami is expected after the quake.

Update at 2:30 p.m. ET: The Washington Post quotes a USGS official as saying, "We would certainly expect aftershocks."

Update at 2:29 p.m. ET: The USGS suggests that the quake is the largest to originate in Virginia since May 31, 1897.

Update at 2:26 p.m. ET: The USGS says the quake was centered at a depth of 4.6 miles.

Update at 2:18 p.m. ET: In "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."

Update at 2:16 p.m. ET: Fox News reports that JFK airport has been shut down because of the quake.

Update at 2:15 p.m. ET: "It scared the heck out of me, I'm still shaking," said Joan Morris, spokeswoman for the northern district of the Virginia Department of Transportation. A few minutes after the quake, there were no reports of damage to roads or bridges in the state, Morris said.

Update at 2:13 p.m. ET: The USGS puts the magnitude of the quake at 5.9.

Update at 2:12 p.m. ET: The quake could be felt in McLean, Va., headquarters of USA TODAY. It caused the building to sway. Some items could be heard falling from shelves. A number of employees left the building.

Update at 2:10 p.m. ET: NBC reports that the quake was centered 9 miles from Mineral, Va., which is 100 miles south of Washington.

Doug Kammerer, meteorologist with the NBC affiliate in Washington, calls the tremor a "very big earthquake for our area."

The quake struck around 1:52 p.m. ET and lasted for about 30 to 45 seconds.

There have been no reports of injuries or widespread damage.

Update at 2 p.m. ET: Reuters reports an earthquake centered near Mineral, Va., rocked the Mid-Atlantic states and was felt as far north at Manhattan and as far south as North Carolina.

Update at 1:57 p.m. ET: The Associated Press reports that the Pentagon is being evacuated.

Fox News reports that several public buildings, including the Capitol, have been evacuated.

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