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Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

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Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Earthquake

Reader Interactions

171Comments

  4. 4.

    Raven (formerly stuckinred)

    And if California slides into the ocean
    Like the mystics and statistics say it will
    I predict this motel will be standing until I pay my bill

    Just thought we needed some quake tunes!

  6. 6.

    Nathaniel

    Wow, so I wasn’t dreaming. Happened in Bethesda, MD. About 15 mins away from DC.

    I almost didn’t believe it. Earthquakes almost never happen here.

  7. 7.

    Raven (formerly stuckinred)

    Day after day, more people come to L… A…

    Don’t you tell anybody, the whole place’s slipping away

    Where can we go, when there’s no San Francisco?

    Better get ready to tie up the boat in Idaho

    Do you know the swim, you better learn quick Jim

    Those who don’t know the swim, better sing the hymn

    Tuna at the bowl

    Find fillet of much sole!

    Ooooo what can you do

    With a bushel of wet gold?

    Day after day, more people come to L… A.

    Don’t you tell anybody, the whole place’s shaking away

    Where can we go, when there’s no San Francisco?

    Better get ready to tie up the boat in Idaho

  8. 8.

    Duckest Fuckingway: Ask not for whom the Duck Fucks. . .

    What bullshit! was just evacuated out of a 60-yo steel-reinforced concrete structure to stand right next to an 140-yo brick structure. Yay! moronic contingency (not)planning.

  10. 10.

    MattR

    Felt it in my ground floor Jersey apt. Thought the guy above me was struggling with some large piece of furniture. But then it lasted too long. Ellie was absolutely useless as she didn’t react in any way.

    Have a feeling this is gonna mess with the commute out of NYC. Amtrak is currently shut down while they check all the rail lines, bridges and tunnels. I imagine the MTA is doing similar checks. Hopefully that all gets taken care of soon and things are back to a normal schedule by 4 or so.

  15. 15.

    Duckest Fuckingway: Ask not for whom the Duck Fucks. . .

    WeeBey: K-thug’s right. The flavors in my Martini aren’t blended at all well.

  20. 20.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Seismologist (I assume) on MSNBC says East coast earthquakes are felt at greater distances than in the West, cause the earth in the east is much harder.

    I did not know that.

  21. 21.

    ericblair

    @PeakVT:

    So the North Anna NNP did shut down. Off-site power was lost but the generators are working.

    Before anyone soils their BVDs and starts preparing for the Radioactive Zombie Apocalypse, it was a manual precautionary shutdown.

    Personally, I blame society for all this.

  22. 22.

    Duckest Fuckingway: Ask not for whom the Duck Fucks. . .

    Raven: Not at gunpoint, no. More at job-point, if you catch my meaning, if you get my drift.

  24. 24.

    erlking

    I believe it was immediately preceded by Eric Cantor saying, “Well, now that I think about, increasing revenues IS really the only way to go if we want to have a decent society.”

    Then, heads exploded.

  25. 25.

    quannlace

    How soon before the Repubs can blame this on Obama?

    Feel kind of left out. Here in New Jersey, 20 minutes from Manhatten-nada!

  30. 30.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @quannlace:

    Feel kind of left out. Here in New Jersey, 20 minutes from Manhatten-nada!

    Then you’ll appreicate Alex Pareene’s tweet:

    pareene Alex Pareene
    I think Chris Christie just jumped into the race
    55 minutes ago

  32. 32.

    Mnemosyne

    @Elizabelle:

    That, of course, is proof that God is telling Cantor to keep doing everything he’s doing, unlike when a quake hits San Francisco because God hates fags.

  33. 33.

    Jay C

    Felt nothing here in the Scenic Berkshires of Western MA – probably due to gay marriage, that….

  34. 34.

    dmsilev

    @Scott: Let me guess. He thinks Obama should have gone back in time and used the mighty power of his mind to hold the Earth together?

    Or, option B, he’s dumber than the average conservative pundit.

  35. 35.

    trollhattan

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    What, we all have rototillers out here and have mixed everything up?

    (idle speculation: the west is much younger geologically and that may mean the east coast subsurface is more consolidated and continuous, the better to transmit quake waves. I’m no geo but have worked with dozens of the critters.)

  37. 37.

    Marc McKenzie

    @MattR:
    As a Jersey resident, I also felt it. It was a brief shake, and some items rattled…but I wondered, “What the hell was that?”

    Checked CNN, and sure enough, there was coverage.

    Still, no reason to start thinking that Emmerich’s 2012 was right on the money. Quakes do happen on the East Coast, but not as frequently.

  40. 40.

    Ken

    I live in the DC suburbs. I wasn’t exactly overwhelmed by the quake.

    It’s sad watching CNN lose its mind over this.

    No reports of casualties, dozens of dollars of property damage, and they’ve been using the word ‘disaster’ with great abandon.

  43. 43.

    The Dangerman

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    …cause the earth in the east is much harder.

    Heads, too.

    With the dangers of liquifaction, this seems kinda counter-intuitive, but explains the reactions from such long distances to the Epi.

  44. 44.

    gene108

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    There are a lot of big geologic differences, between the east coast and west coasts of the USA. Rock hardness is just one of many, many differences I bet a real geologist could spend a lot of time talking about.

    Felt here in South Jersey. Felt the wooden floors in the office just go up and down, like I was at see. Very disorienting.

    We had a “group think” trying to figure out what happened. Whether it was construction or something else…when co-workers got calls from the spousal units about the same thing in other parts of the area…well Earthquake became the hypothesis…

  46. 46.

    Hal

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Seismologist (I assume) on MSNBC says East coast earthquakes are felt at greater distances than in the West, cause the earth in the east is much harder.

    I did not know that.

    I remember hearing years ago that NYC was pretty earthquake safe because the foundation is largely bedrock. But then I read this old story, so I’m not so sure anymore:

    All seemed to be going well — until Dec. 8, 2006, when the project set off an earthquake, shaking and damaging buildings and terrifying many in a city that, as every schoolchild here learns, had been devastated exactly 650 years before by a quake that sent two steeples of the Münster Cathedral tumbling into the Rhine.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/business/energy-environment/24geotherm.html?pagewanted=all

  49. 49.

    EvolutionaryDesign

    There was an earthquake in SE Colorado by Trinidad last night, too. That’s three earthquakes across America in less than 24 hours. What the hell is going on?

  50. 50.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Shep Smith smugly and condescendingly calling evacuations wimpy panic. He should broadcast from one of them tunnels for the next 48 hours.

  51. 51.

    PurpleGirl

    Queens, NYC; on the 17th floor of 18-story building. I felt my computer desk and office chair move. I saw a stack of VHS tapes sway. I felt like my brain was moving around inside my head. There is some construction work being done on the water tower and at first I thought it was something to do with that. Weird feeling.

    ETA: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsus/Quakes/at00lqe6×3.php

    You can report on what you felt there. Help the scientists…

  52. 52.

    James Hare

    10th floor in Falls Church. OMFG almost shat my pants. Terrifying stairway tour later and everyone is freaking out.

    Get home and my cats are excited I’m home early. They rode it out on the 15th floor of my apartment building just a few miles down the road.

  55. 55.

    DS

    The windows in my apartment here in Toronto were rattling for a few seconds. I had no idea why. The more you know.

  57. 57.

    Elie

    Can you imagine what the Japanese must have felt — the earth shook for Four Minutes — my God… that is a long damned time

  58. 58.

    David Hunt

    So has anyone heard from Cole? I mean let’s face it: the man can destroy his shoulder picking up a dog. Do we have any confirmation that he’s not dead and being consumed by Tunch as we speak?

    Seriously, I hope that everyone in the area of the quake is okay. Best wishes to all of you out there.

  59. 59.

    yeahyeahwhatevs (Studly Pantload, once upon a time)

    You know you live in earthquake territory when everytime you’re downtown or near any tallish buildings, every now and then you make a note of any safe zones to run to if giants shards of glass and masonry should start falling from the sky.

    But really, the Pacific Northwest is beautiful. Just try not to think too much about the fact that yonder mountain looming over the landscape can bury untold millions of acres of developed human habitat with the mud of lava and a fuckton of instant glacial melt any time it wants…

  60. 60.

    Mnemosyne

    @EvolutionaryDesign:

    What the hell is going on?

    Probably normal seismic activity that’s slightly stronger than average today. Check out of the USGS website and you’ll see that the earth is constantly shaking. You just don’t notice it most of the time.

  61. 61.

    MattR

    @Svensker:

    Friends in Chatham are reporting quite a rumble, too.

    We know how to party in Chatham :)

    This story was actually one of the first things I thought of when I felt the apt shake. It also reminded me of being at MSG for concerts where the whole building was shaking with the crowd and what it felt like if you stopped moving.

  63. 63.

    PeakVT

    @ericblair: I’m just curious about how aggressive their safety procedures are. I think the chances of a 5.9 damaging critical systems is low, but it’s good to see the utility erring on the side of precaution.

    The Surry NPP continues to operate. That plant is about 85 miles away.

  66. 66.

    Tom Q

    Okay, I may have the oddest story: my wife and I felt nothing. Our cats didn’t move…and animals are notorious for reacting to things like this way before humans.

    Why is this odd? The guy in the apartment across the hall from me called in a panic, saying his mirror was swaying. I thought he was nuts, till I got another call from a friend in Brooklyn, and then saw CNN.

    I live on 75th Street near Riverside in NY. I SHOULD have felt something. It’s like our apartment was equivalent to the eye of a hurricane.

  75. 75.

    Raven (formerly stuckinred)

    Holy shit CNN reports “some cell phone service disrupted”! WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE??

  76. 76.

    MattR

    @PeakVT: I think I heard that 5 plants shutdown in total and that the others were in PA and southern NJ. And/or those five plants reported a “unusual occurrence” to the NRC. But the report seemed to indicate that it was a normal, controlled safety precaution.

  77. 77.

    Pengie

    Lots of shaking for about a minute here in Charlottesville, VA. Nothing damaged that I can see, but I’m sure if anything fell over anywhere within 50 miles the local news channel will park a broadcast truck on it.

  78. 78.

    Judas Escargot

    I work in Cambridge and felt it here.

    Embarrassingly enough, I happened to be sitting on the Throne of Thought when the quake hit. At the time, I thought it was one of the freight trains that go by once or twice a day shaking the building.

  79. 79.

    pto892

    Meh. It got a bit shaky here in the Maryland hill country, and I went back to work. Stuck some NRBQ (All Shook Up) on the music box to get over it.

  81. 81.

    yeahyeahwhatevs (Studly Pantload, once upon a time)

    @Mnemosyne:

    They happen almost daily here in the PNW. Used to live in a place where I could sense some of the “microquakes” and watch our closet door mirror wobble a little bit now and again.

  82. 82.

    gene108

    @The Dangerman:

    With the dangers of liquifaction, this seems kinda counter-intuitive, but explains the reactions from such long distances to the Epi.

    From what I remember about geology in the U.S., I am making this conjecture.

    It has to do with the relatively consistent large geologic formations on the east coast, versus how mashed up geologic formations are out west, especially in California.

    You end up with a lot of different formations pointing every which way, out west. On the east coast things line up more uniformly and the formations follow a relatively contiguous pattern versus the west coast.

    It’s easier for waves to propagate over uniform environments, versus having changes to the environment coming up frequently.

    Think about a sound wave going through the air, hitting a water barrier, then going back to the air. The water would’ve taken something out of the sound wave.

    The west coast is full of different types of geologic formations, pointing in different directions, so that probably acts to disrupt the waves.

  83. 83.

    The Dangerman

    @David Hunt:

    Do we have any confirmation that he’s not dead and being consumed by Tunch as we speak?

    He lives in a residence where a large animal jumps down from a table or windowsill from time to time; this may not have registered with him.

  84. 84.

    Tom Q

    @Raven (formerly stuckinred): Every time there’s a major disaster, cell phones are guaranteed to go out. The grid is only set up for a certain percentage of users to be on at one time. When something happens that makes everyone reach for their phones, the system can’t cope. Happened the day of the NY blackout as well.

  85. 85.

    RobertB

    Felt in in Columbus, OH, on top of a 9-story building. We weren’t running for the exits, but you could tell it was shaking.

  86. 86.

    trollhattan

    @Chyron HR:

    Holy crap, this means he escaped to the hollow volcano lair with his grrrl guards and hot blonde nurse. Minions in jumpsuits at his bidding!

  87. 87.

    joeyess

    Maybe the New Madrid Fault will go and swallow up only Limbaugh when he’s visiting his hometown. He should be enough to sate the beast.

  89. 89.

    The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik

    It’s funny I can manage to reach family back home in WV, but local calls are a bust. That and 3G service seemed up fine.

    I suppose priorities must be seen to.

  91. 91.

    kideni

    I think we might have felt the Colorado quake, or an aftershock, here in Madison, Wis. A little before noon here, the dogs (mine and those in the houses around me) all got agitated, something shook the building a little bit (like something really big and heavy being dropped on the porch; I’m on the third floor of an oldish wood-frame three-flat), the smoke alarm went off for a few moments (it’s hardwired into the building, and I think the sound is what it makes when it comes back on after being turned off), the phone line went dead for about fifteen minutes before coming back on. When I first heard about the East Coast quake, I thought it might’ve been that, but my weirdness came before that.

  94. 94.

    HE Pennypacker, Wealthy Industrialist

    In California we respond to a 5.8 quake with “Get back to work.”

  96. 96.

    Phyllis

    Several people here in my office, myself included, felt a slight tremor. We’re about 80 miles nw of Charleston SC, which is on a pretty major faultline.

  97. 97.

    geg6

    I’m home sick (a horrible Cole-level summer cold, with fever and the whole 9 yards) and felt it, but attributed it to cold meds and too much green and spearmint tea with honey. Then I got a University-wide text alert that, no, what I thought was a fever-induced sensory hallucination really WAS the floor of the sunroom shaking. Weird. We’ve had them before (usually centered around Erie), but never strong enough to actually feel. I just about 25 or so miles northwest of Pittsburgh.

  98. 98.

    Beth in VA

    Earthquakes happen everyday, but this was huge for Virginia. Many older folks downtown were saying this was their first earthquake ever.

  99. 99.

    Duckest Fuckingway: Ask not for whom the Duck Fucks. . .

    Judas Escargot: You’re lucky. That’s where I was heading before I got rerouted to the shit brickhouse.

  100. 100.

    Martin

    Hey, did Tunch jump off of the bookcase about an hour and a half ago? I could have sworn I sensed something.

  102. 102.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Elizabelle:

    Obviously, someone is trying to rattle Eric Cantor, and he’s going to call a press conference to make sure everyone knows about it.

  104. 104.

    Tom Q

    @Raven (formerly stuckinred): Oh, i didn’t think you were serious there. I just thought the info about why cell phones go out was something not everyone would know and some might find interesting.

    Also interesting: Libya has apparently suddenly ceased to exist, at least on TV.

  105. 105.

    gocart mozart

    Relax people, Perry just flew to New Hampshire and this effected the delicate balance of stupid on the North American tectonic plate. Go about your normal business.

  106. 106.

    JD Rhoades

    An earthquake sent tremors from the nation’s capital to New York City and New England.

    And NC too. It felt like someone was moving furniture down the stairs of my building.

  108. 108.

    Nutella

    Best earthquake tweet:

    @politicoroger: “We wouldn’t be having earthquakes like this if Hillary were president.”

  109. 109.

    Raven (formerly stuckinred)

    @Tom Q: What I do find interesting is how texting works even when cells don’t. That was the case during Katrina.

  110. 110.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Ezra Klein has a list of the best earthquake tweets, with Pareene at number one. I don’t like the man, but I have to admit David Frum made me laugh

    @politicoroger: “We wouldn’t be having earthquakes like this if Hillary were president.”
    @TomFornelli: “WOLF BLITZER IS ON THE PHONE WITH THE EARTHQUAKE.”
    @davidfrum: “DC public schools did not dismiss. The kids are tougher than Politico.”

  112. 112.

    Neddie Jingo

    I was in the crapper.

    Fourth floor, modern office building in Court House, Arlington. I knew exactly what was happening — been in a few before in different parts of the world.

    I had two thoughts simultaneously:

    1) How am I going to finish this up?
    2) How well quake-proofed is this building?

    I can attest that if necessary you can pinch it off pretty quick. I was out the door and headed downstairs with the rest of the goobers before the floor stopped swaying. And yes, I washed my hands.

  113. 113.

    hildebrand

    I think even a mild earthquake would split Deep South Texas wide open because it is so damn dry. Not quite as bad as the Hill Country, where even somebody tripping and falling would rupture the space time continuum, but my goodness.

    That said, I definitely do blame Perry – opening his mouth has clearly pissed off the entire pantheon of all divine creatures and assorted mythical whatnot for every major religion past, present, and future. Bastard.

  115. 115.

    JGabriel

    So SE Colorado has its largest earthquake in decades, and now the East Coast has the largest earthquake it’s ever recorded.

    I’m thinking it’s probably not a coincidence, but, for the life of me, I can’t see how they would be related. Anyone with some knowledge of US fault lines and bedrock want to treat us to some educated speculation?

    .

  116. 116.

    chopper

    still trying to make some calls here in brooklyn. no service.

    trying to get a hold of the hotel i’m hitting this weekend at cape may to find out if i can get my deposit back, since a hurricane is coming.

    thanks, god.

  118. 118.

    Brian B.

    @gene108: @gene108: The other thing going on is the age of the crust. The crust is the top 50-100 km of the Earth, and it is the main layer that propagates the strong surface seismic waves.

    Out west, the Crust is generally a lot warmer. The Rocky Mountains have been built up and pulled apart and affected by volcanism for much of the last 100 million years. The East Coast however has been a passive margin for about 200 million+ years. That means the crust in the East is older, colder, and in many cases thicker than the crust out West. The colder crust is generally more rigid and therefore it attenuates seismic energy less.

  119. 119.

    nastybrutishntall

    Do any seismologists or seismologically-curious out there know if the CO earthquake primed the VA one? Seems mighty mighty coincidental.

  122. 122.

    Rosalita

    Felt it in Western CT. Thought I was nuts until I saw the news on Twitter. As a former resident of Southern California I didn’t really get why all the hysteria and evacuation of buildings around here. Pussies.

  123. 123.

    Brian B.

    @JGabriel: No, there’s no fault line of any sort that could connect Virginia and Colorado. You go through many different provinces, from the coastal plain to the Appalachians to the central plains and all the way onto the Colorado Plateau. It’s purely a coincidence.

  124. 124.

    chopper

    @JGabriel:

    I’m thinking it’s probably not a coincidence, but, for the life of me, I can’t see how they would be related.

    the president is black. go check out any movie with a black president. hurricanes, meteors, earthquakes.

  125. 125.

    Sam Houston

    Bush was on vacation when Katrina hit. Monday, August 29 the levees broke. Two days later he decides to check up on NOLA in AF1. Nice work if you can get it.

  126. 126.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Meredith:

    Could have been worse, could have disrupted some cocktail party in DC and caused tiger shrimp to fall to the floor.

  127. 127.

    bonkers

    @Nutella: They stealin’ my stuff?

    Hillary’s DOJ, led bravely by Lanny Davis would go after copyright infringers, but not Obama-lamadingdong’s stooge Eric Holder. Nooooo….He hates blue-collar people, especially the white ones. (blerp…pop…bzzzzZT!)

  129. 129.

    Nutella

    @BGinCHI:

    My building in Chicago swayed for 10-20 seconds then my Twitter stream lit up. (21st century earthquake detection)

  130. 130.

    chopper

    @Meredith:

    if only congress were in session. and it was a 10.0 centered under the capitol with no damage anywhere else. hell, a sinkhole would be nice too.

  131. 131.

    Felanius Kootea

    Still not able to reach my mom in NY because her phone line is down. Weird. My friends in Boston didn’t even realize it was a quake. Glad it was only 5.8.

    In other news, the president of S&P steps down. Anyone know the real story behind this?

  132. 132.

    Leaving Texas

    @poopyman There are reports of a collapsed building on Pennsylvania Avenue, so they sent federal workers who work in the area home. Frankly, I’m happy my government worker husband will have the building he works in inspected before he returns to work tomorrow.

  133. 133.

    gene108

    @nastybrutishntall:

    Do any seismologists or seismologically-curious out there know if the CO earthquake primed the VA one? Seems mighty mighty coincidental.

    I’m not sure there’s enough data an hour or so after the VA quake to figure that out.

    It’d be fascinating if p-and-s waves could travel that far and effect otherwise inactive fault zones.

  136. 136.

    Neddie Jingo

    @Poopyman: Actually, I haven’t heard anything about shutting down the whole Fed. Gov. (they did evacuate the Pentagon and White House, but only temporarily until they could check the building), but my iPhone traffic app shows about what you’d expect for this time of day. I’m about to head out into it, so wish me luck.

  137. 137.

    Napoleon

    @Raven (formerly stuckinred):

    What I do find interesting is how texting works even when cells don’t. That was the case during Katrina.

    My understanding that is because 1) they use less capacity of the system and 2) by their nature the wireless supplier can queue them and send them when capacity opens up. You place a call and it only goes through if the capacity is there right then.

  138. 138.

    PeakVT

    @nastybrutishntall: I think the consensus is that small quakes have no effects at long distances, and large quakes prompt only a few quakes at long distances. Large quakes on subduction trenches can shift stress to adjacent locked segments and cause them to release, but that’s an entirely different tectonic setting from the quakes in CO and VA.

  140. 140.

    Mike in NC

    Epicentered in Eric Cantor’s congressional district. Mineral, Virginia.

    My wife has a retired friend who lives there, with a home on the lake, and we visit about once a year. Possibly the most isolated and backward place I ever saw during the time we lived in NoVA. The locals looked like extras from “Deliverance”.

    Felt no quake here but the media is saying we’re all gonna die when Hurricane Irene hits on Friday.

  141. 141.

    ET

    I could have done without that.

    Started slow and then it got really wiggly. I though I was hallucinating. Before I realized what was going on I thought terrorist who got it, it had to be close if I could feel it. Then it kept going.

  142. 142.

    Mr Furious

    We felt it pretty clearly in our second floor Ann Arbor, MI office. Enough to be slightly unnerving.

  143. 143.

    chopper

    @ET:

    was eating a hamburger at a place around the corner from my house. felt the shaking and at first thought i had nausea or something. everybody else in the place was looking around, so i went to the usgs website and sure enough a quake in VA. i was all ‘its okay, people, the internet is here to help us understand things’.

  144. 144.

    Walker

    Fourth floor office in Ithaca, NY; felt it here. While I was in the office advising a freshman — that was fun.

  145. 145.

    Brian B.

    @gene108:

    I’m not sure there’s enough data an hour or so after the VA quake to figure that out.

    It’d be fascinating if p-and-s waves could travel that far and effect otherwise inactive fault zones.

    The p and s waves from a quake of moderate magnitude will actually travel the full way through the Earth. They’re detectable by seismometers thousands of kilometers away, and when a quake happens in an unusual spot you can get some interesting data.

    But the amount of motion or stress that you get out of a p or s wave is very little. Most of the damage you get from Earthquakes are caused by the surface waves, which generally carry quite a bit more energy. The p and s magnitude from the colorado quake here would have been tiny.

    Its entirely a coincidence. There’s nothing that connects the 2 spots tectonically.

  146. 146.

    Mister Papercut

    I work in Richmond. Was, erm, on the can at the time. Like an earthquake isn’t going to evoke a lot of thoughts and feelings, but right then? Worst of all possible times.

  147. 147.

    PeakVT

    @Napoleon: That’s correct. A text message consumes only a few hundred bytes once in the sender’s and recipient’s cells, where as a call consumes a stream of a couple of kilobytes per second (on average).

  148. 148.

    trollhattan

    Occurs to me the quake might be just a message: “Wake the hell up, there’s a hurricane coming!”

  149. 149.

    trollhattan

    @Mister Papercut:

    Was home once with the stomach flu when a quake hit. Worse, I was a waterbed which tossed me around like the S.S. Minnow. My flu-driven “Just kill me now” prayers seemed about to be answered.

  150. 150.

    Origuy

    After something like this, the cell phone lines always jam up, mostly with people calling their friends to ask if they felt it. At least in California, not many people call 911 to ask if there was an earthquake. (But it happens.)

  151. 151.

    Tone In DC

    Had us pretty rattled here on Pennsylvania Avenue.
    Our company, we found, has no directives for the ground rocking.

    For those posting comments regarding appropriate music for this…

    The walls start shakin’
    The earth was quakin’

  152. 152.

    trollhattan

    @PeakVT:

    Yup. Quakes this magnitude are common, nearly daily occurrences. Nobody pays them much mind until they hit populated areas or long-dormant/unknown faults.

  153. 153.

    ET

    I work for the feds and I think they wanted to check the building and make sure all systems were OK and that process would take time – so they told people they could go home. Also, there are fire code issues etc, so they may not have wanted to go operational for liability issues. They would have had to let some back in to get their belongings, because many evacuated without purses and the like.

  154. 154.

    Susan Kitchens

    @gene108:

    Thanks for that east vs west geology explanation. Very helpful. I’d guessed that there’s a reason, but didn’t know what it was.

    I’m in SoCal, at the foothills of the youngest mountains evar (San Gabriels) and totally loved reading McPhee’s Assembling California (talk about your patchwork bits of land!)

  157. 157.

    Judas Escargot

    @rebmarks:

    I work in Cambridge and it definitely made my 11th floor office sway.

    This part of Cambridge is essentially built on landfill (liquefaction territory), so I wonder if that “amplified” the waves when they hit here.

    No one I know in the towns outside of the metro area seems to have felt it.

  159. 159.

    LanceThruster

    When the east coast gets one of those once in a thousand year quakes, it will be chaos. A lot of structures will be leveled.

    Studies show that the once in a thousand year quake for the Mississippi delta will cause liquefaction that will swallow cities whole.

  160. 160.

    JGabriel

    @Brian B.:

    Its entirely a coincidence. There’s nothing that connects the 2 spots tectonically.

    It’s too much of a coincidence. Like people saying for years that it’s just a coincidence that continents seem to fit together like a jigsaw puzzle — which we now know is due to plate tectonics.

    If it was just a middling quake in CO and a record breaker in VA, or vice versa, then the coincidence line might be more believable. But they were both record breakers — VA’s was the largest ever recorded for that area, and CO’s was the largest in over a century.

    Maybe I’m wrong, but I think it’s more likely that we simply don’t know the explanation yet, rather than the explanation being “coincidence”.

    .

  161. 161.

    JGabriel

    @Mister Papercut:

    I work in Richmond. Was, erm, on the can at the time. Like an earthquake isn’t going to evoke a lot of thoughts and feelings, but right then? Worst of all possible times.

    It was just a coincidence.

    .

  162. 162.

    Elizabelle

    @chopper:

    go check out any movie with a black president. hurricanes, meteors, earthquakes.

    Too damn funny.

    Why I get much less work done, now that I know about Balloon Juice.

  163. 163.

    gene108

    @Brian B.:

    Its entirely a coincidence. There’s nothing that connects the 2 spots tectonically.

    True. The odds of the CO quake traveling through the middle of this country and through the Appalachian Mountains to set off another quake, are pretty slim.

    Like I said, it’d be fascinating if that actually happened.

    @Susan Kitchens:

    Also very interesting Annals of the Former World by McPhee. He takes a Princeton geologist with him along I-80 going east to west and basically does a geologic cross section of the USA along I-80.

  164. 164.

    drkrick

    A couple of things – the land lines as well as cell service were hosed in NoVA for about a half hour. First time I’ve experienced that in a bit less than 10 years. Folks at the National Cathedral are reporting that the central tower looks like it’s leaning in addition to the 3 out of 4 spires that were knocked loose and a lot of schools in DC have suffered damage. A little bit more interesting afternoon than I originally thought.

  165. 165.

    Larkspur

    @Elizabelle:

    …the president is black. go check out any movie with a black president. hurricanes, meteors, earthquakes.

    You and me both, Elizabelle. You made me laugh, chopper @124.

    I’m out here on the left coast, but I would never snark on anyone for getting the wiggins about any kind of quake. They are very creepy. You never know what they’re going to sound like, and there’s always this brief weightless feeling. Sometimes I suspect a quake when it’s really a large truck, but I never suspect a large truck when it’s a quake. There’s just that extra dose of weird.

    And being on the toilet is not the worst place to be. The pipes provide a little structural support.

    Elie @57: Yes, I was thinking about Japan, too. Aside from the actual considerable damage and injuries, the PTSD alone must be crippling so many, many people.

    I wish people – and most particularly, 24 hour cable newscritters – could just deal with it without having to conjure up blame and drama. It is a big headache, even if the damage is minimal, but it’s also an opportunity for a review of critical systems. You can’t schedule a mock disaster scenario; it’s just too disruptive and expensive. But when you are handed a near disaster situation, you might as well make an exercise out of it.

    Note to self: check supply of batteries and get fresh water containers.

  168. 168.

    Cermet

    @Rosalita: Being stupid is your problem – the cross beam in my office cracked- unlike the left coast, we do not have building codes for quakes – esp. when 4.6 was the greatest recorded in 1875. Be careful is good sense.

  169. 169.

    Jeffro

    How does “liquefaction” work if you’re on the Delmarva Sandbar? ‘Cause we sure felt a strong one up here in northern DE.

    Disappointed in my own reaction time – had to have been a full three or four seconds before I realized that wudn’t no cement truck passing by.

  170. 170.

    Larkspur

    @Cermet: I think you are being unnecessarily rude to Rosalita, but nevertheless, I agree with you. It’s similar to the European heat wave of 2003. There were days of 100 degree heat. I remember reading a Washington Post editorial poking fun at the whining Europeans, and pointing out that unlike the weak European cities, Washington DC knows how to handle the heat.

    Which is a ridiculous thing to say, even if the editor didn’t realize at the time that tens of thousands of people died because of the heat wave. A friend of mine in England pointed out that their roads are built to handle rain, not sustained heat.

    So yeah. If my area were to get hit by a tornado or by a week-long hard winter frost, I wouldn’t appreciate being mocked, either.

  171. 171.

    Mnemosyne

    @Cermet:
    @Larkspur:

    Look, I’m sure that having an earthquake when you didn’t expect it was startling, and it sucks that you have a crack in your cross-beam, but that’s not the same thing as a goddamned freeway breaking in half.

    The 100+ degree temperatures in Europe were a genuine disaster. Having your lawn furniture fall over is not.

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