Earthquake...

[Gone-Camping]

Ok, to you West Coasties this is nothing big, but here in Virginia it is an entirely different matter!!!
 
I was working in Richmond this afternoon, when just before 4pm (according to the news, it was 3:59 to be precise) the ground started shaking underneath my feet, the whole building was shaking, the pictures on the wall were rattling, and the chandeliers were jingling (and not to the tune of jingle bells either).
 
Having never experienced one of these before in my entire life, and that includes the six months I spend in San Diego, this was a very un-nerving event!!! There were 3 tremors, the first and largest was later reported as a 4.5 in the richter scale, followed by a pair of after shocks.
 
I was one the western edge of Richmond in the Mid-Lothian area when this happened, and the epicenter was only 25-30 miles west of down town Richmond, which put me about 20 miles away from it!
 
What really get's me, is the suddeness of the whole thing, how quick it and unannounced it arrives, and how quick it ended. It was all over before I even realized what had happened!!!
 
Yep, you guys out on the west coast can keep these things!!!!

[NightOwl]

Hey, Cliff, I entirely sympathize with you and agree about how weird it is when quakes come along like that in unexpected places.  We had a little one in Ann  Arbor some years ago and our house (60 year old solid brick Dutch Colonial) began to shake rattle and roll like a freight train was going through the living room.  NO ONE I knew had been aware of it except me (everyone was at work in modern buildings or in their car.)  When I insisted I'd been in a quake,   my family & friends were convinced I had finally gone completely 'round the bend until they heard later  on  the news that it shook the whole Great Lakes region.  (Actually, I think it was a product of The New Madrid Fault.)  (And that one is potentially more perilous than the San Andreas.)

A creepy sensation isnt it to know that even The Old Dominion can get hit?

And speaking of that, when the girls were early teens, we went caving with some UVA spelunkers in the New River caves on the cliffs  above Pearisburg.  And when we were pretty deep in, one of the guys said to our leader, "Hmmm, this section has changed a lot since I was here last--must be the quake they had this spring  changed the passage around."  I damn near fainted--here I was deep in a cave with my little kids and we could be buried alive at any moment!  You better believe I was delighted when we saw daylight again.

[labontefan]

Obviously, way out here in southwestern Virginia, I was too far away to feel it. However, our main offices and our other call center are in Charlottesville, and apparently they felt it. A little after 4pm today, I saw an e-mail addressed to one of the "@ groups" with the subject "Earthquake info." Since that particular "@ group" goes to the entire sales floor (both of 'em) and is used to let people know when someone gets cut off during a sales call, the subject sort of surprised me. I opened the e-mail and saw a link to some kind of official earthquake site. When I clicked on it, there was a map of central and eastern Virginia with the heading "Recent Earthquakes". The red dot that represented the epicenter was about halfway between Richmond and Charlottesville...a little closer to Richmond.

So apparently they felt it in Charlottesville and this particular guy had decided to do some research. According to that web site, a 4.5 is considered "mild".


I do remember a slight quake we had around here several years ago. It was a Sunday and I had come up to my parents' house to do laundry. They were both gone, so no one was here but me. I was sitting in my dad's recliner and I felt it shake just a bit. I didn't think too much about it at first, because the house is only about 100 yards or so from a railroad track. It's not uncommon to feel things shake a little when a loaded coal train goes by. (My mom always used to complain that she could never keep a single picture hanging straight in the house!) Then I realized that I didn't hear a train. The next day at work, I heard that a mild earthquake had been reported in the area.

That was plenty enough earthquake for me, thank you very much!

[oldmoose]

So now we have movers and shakers on the other coast!

Moose

[SactoCampers]

Mrs. Sacto was in both the 1989 Loma Prieta Quake and the Northridge Quake of the early 90's.
 
I was in the 89 quake.
 
She doesn't like earthquakes. I don't either.
 

[SactoCampers]

Mrs. Sacto was in both the 1989 Loma Prieta quake and the Northridge quake of the early 90's. I was in the 89 quake.
 
Neither of us like earthquakes.

[B-flat]

I was about 1 hr south of Raleigh at almost 4pm and was just arriving home. I sensed something but just thought to myself that it was something going on with maneuvers at Ft. Bragg military base. It was most likely a small tremor from the quake as was reported on the news tonight.  You can read the report from the Raleigh TV station website.
 
http://www.wral.com/news/2693847/detail.html

[campingboaters]

Does anyone know the times of the aftershocks?  I know I'm REALLY far from this earthquake, but I swear I felt something around 7 PM yesterday (although I'm not sure exactly what time it was).  At the time, I THOUGHT what I felt was an after affect of motion sickness from my airplane trip home on Monday, but I was fine all day on Tuesday.

I have searched for the times of the aftershocks, but couldn't find any info.  
 
Ah... maybe I'm just going crazy...

[stateparkgrl]

You're not crazy...the Richmond Times Dispatch said this morning that the effects of the quake were felt as far north as New York, south to Georgia, and West to Tennessee and Kentucky.  Given that it took 4 minutes to get to my office (25 miles from the center), 7pm may have really been an aftershock in PA.

Here at Pocahontas State Park in Chesterfield Co., it was so strong that it knocked a picture off my wall.  DH was at home doing office work, and ran outside because he actually thought the fuel oil furnace had blown up.  One of our park rangers was in his vehicle in the woods, and thought the other guys were playing a trick on him by getting on his bumper and "shaking" his truck.

First floods, then hurricanes....now earthquakes.  Can anyone say "Revelation" !?!?!?!  

Louise

1994 Starcraft Starflyer
2003 F150 Crew Cab
DH (shaken!) and 1987 daughter

[Miss-Teri]

We had a small quake here in Oklahoma a couple of days ago.  You guys out west can keep your earthquakes - at least in a tornado we can go underground to get away!