The Virginia 2011 earthquake occurred at 1:51 pm on August 23, 2011. … Below are publications associated with this project. response to the August 23, 2011, Virginia earthquake. However, buttresses that support the central tower, a prominent part of the city skyline, look normal. A magnitude 5.8 earthquake occurred in Virginia on August 23, 2011. The West Virginia Office of Miners' Health Safety and Training stated that West Virginia coal mines were safe following the tremors. The focus was 60 kilometres (37 mi) northwest of Richmond and 8 kilometres (5 mi) from the town of Mineral, Virginia. [28], From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, "Earthquake strikes US east coast, felt all the way down in Orlando, FL reported by KCNSEN", "5.9 earthquake in central Virginia felt across East Coast", "Earthquake, aftershocks rattle Northern Virginia", "Largest Earthquakes by State, List of Earthquakes", "Historic United States Earthquakes Sorted by State & Date", "Mag 5.8 earthquake felt in Metro Atlanta", "Illinois residents may have felt Virginia quake", "Earthquake rattles parts of U.S. East Coast and Canada; no serious injuries", "US earthquake leads to evacuation of White House", "D.C. monuments 'stable' after 5.9 magnitude quake, official says", "5.8 earthquake hits Virginia, rattles NYC, east coast", "5.8-Magnitude Earthquake Strikes East Coast", "Boston-Area Buildings Evacuated After Earthquake", "Earthquake reported along the East Coast", "Quake rocks Washington area, felt on East Coast", "Facebook, Twitter report record earthquake messages", "D.C. National Cathedral Damaged, official says", "Park service: Earthquake cracks Washington Monument near its top, closed indefinitely", "East Coast quake damages people's nerves and temple spires", "5.9 earthquake rocks Virginia, other parts of East Coast", NY gets tremors but no damage from quake in Va. damage. [18] Other buildings were evacuated in Philadelphia, Boston and New York City. Public domain. The press said that blocks fell to the street from the steeple of St. Thomas the Apostle Church. [23] At the National Airport, ceiling tiles in the airport terminal fell to the ground, and flights stopped. [41][42] No accidents or damage from the earthquake were reported in Canada. The 23 August 2011 Mineral, Virginia, earthquake (Mw 5.8) was the largest to strike the eastern U.S. since 1897 and was felt over an extraordinarily large area. In Washington, D.C., the White House,[17] the Capitol building and other buildings were evacuated. Did you feel it? August 2011 Earthquake. The 23 August 2011 earthquake occurred at a relatively shallow depth of . Simply put, rocks in central Virginia are under stress, and on August 23rd, 2011 the stress level exceeded the local rock strength and a previously unknown fault ruptured. A few buildings in Toronto were evacuated. If you haven’t heard, or forgotten recently, there was an earthquake last week. (Credit: Francis Ashland, USGS. Twitter said users were sending up to 5,500 tweets per second. [37], In Pennsylvania, people were told to get out of office buildings in Philadelphia. The seismic history consists of letters, journals, diaries, and newspaper and scholarly articles that supplement seismograph recordings (seismograms) dating from the early twentieth century to the present. Kanawha County dispatchers received more than 350 calls in 45 minutes but there were no reports of damage to buildings and infrastructure other than minor plaster cracking in the old courthouse. The Air Traffic Control tower at John F. Kennedy International Airport was evacuated. The magnitude 5.8 earthquake that struck Louisa County was among the largest to occur along the eastern seaboard of the United States. The August 2011 magnitude 5.8 Virginia earthquake is part of an intriguing and not-yet-understood seismic zone that extends along the east coast of North America. This rate of messages was faster than during the death of Osama bin Laden. [16], Many buildings in the eastern United States are not built strongly enough that earthquakes cannot damage them. The quake caused serious damage to 120 buildings. November Public Lecture: Did You Feel It? FEMA’s National Preparedness Assessment Division (NPAD) and Office of National Capital Region Coordination (NCRC) collaborated with OPM to develop an analysis of the Virginia earthquake response. The plate includes both continental crust and heavier (iron- and magnesium-rich) oceanic crust. The North American Plate is one of the 15 or so major "chunks" of crust that float on top of the hot mantle. Ultimately, scientific studies of this earthquake have helped scientists confirm with empirical data what they were previously able to only estimate or model from the sparse data and smaller earthquakes in this area. North American Plate Source: US Geological Survey (USGS) World Plate Boundaries Animation Virginia and the eastern side of the North American continent are in the middleof a tectonic plate. The Virginia Earthquake of August 23, 2011. PHOTO GALLERY. This map summarizes two and a third centuries of earthquake activity. The shaking was felt by approximately one-third of the U.S. population, and there were reports that it caused minor damage as far away as Charleston, South Carolina, roughly 600km from the epicenter. The earthquake was along the Spotsylvania Fault, an ancient fault line that now sits in the middle of the North American plate. [10][11], Press reports show that the earthquake could be felt a long distance away from its center. Moderate to large earthquakes are infrequent in the Central and Eastern U.S., and many of the largest ones occurred before scientists deployed seismographs to record them. The shaking caused the first ever shutdown of a U.S. commercial nuclear power plant at the North Anna nuclear power facility located about 23km northeast of the epicenter. [40], People in eastern Canada also felt the earthquake, mostly in Southern Ontario, as well as parts of Quebec and the Maritimes. Rocks in this terrane formed as volcanic and plutonic rocks in a continental arc during the Ordovician Period (~470 to 450 million years ago). It was widely felt--from Maine to Georgia, west to Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Chicago, and southeastern Canada--over a broad area inhabited by one-third of the U.S. population. A joint NPAD-NCRC team interviewed 10 senior staff from the FEMA NCR Watch Desk, the FEMA National Continuity Program (NCP) … On August 23, a magnitude 5.8 earthquake struck the Piedmont region of the U.S. East Coast near Mineral, Virginia. The 2011 Virginia Earthquake. The total economic losses from the earthquake were about $200-$300 million, which included millions of dollars in damage to the National Cathedral, the Armed Forces Retirement Home, and the Washington Monument in Washington D.C., as well as minor to major damage to almost 600 residential properties. This reveals the extraordinary distances that damaging ground shaking can extend in eastern North America – about 10 times further than damaging or felt shaking extends in western North America. When the earth stopped shaking, more than 148,000 people reported their experience of the earthquake on the USGS Did You Feel It? [35][36], In Delaware, the New Castle County Courthouse in Wilmington and Family Court in Georgetown were evacuated. Similar to the DYFI felt reports, recordings from the 2011 central Virginia earthquake at USGS (and its partner’s) seismograph stations in the eastern U.S., showed that the crustal rocks are especially efficient at transmitting seismic waves. Both scientific numerical modeling and the aftershock locations define a 10-km-long fault rupture plane trending N28°E and inclined 50°ESE. Did You Feel It?Shaking from the earthquake reported by citizen scientists. In a previous post I focused on the context of the M5.8 Virginia earthquake of 23 August, and took special care to explain why the earthquake was felt over such great distances. Horton, J.W., Jr., Chapman, M.C., and Green, R.A., eds., 2015. (Public domain.). Charles Q. The monument is closed indefinitely. Cross-sectional illustration of normal and reverse dip-slip faults. Damage was relatively light . The 2011 Virginia earthquake occurred in the Chopawamsic terrane. The August 2011 M 5.8 Mineral, Virginia, earthquake that shook much of the northeastern U.S. dramatically demonstrated that passive continental margins sometimes have large earthquakes. The 2011 Virginia Earthquake – Department of the Interiors livechat questions answered. On August 23, 2011 tens of millions of people along the East Coast suddenly felt the earth shaking from the largest earthquake in the eastern U.S. since the M5.8 earthquake in 1944 near Cornwall and Massena, New York. However, even though several small earthquakes are recorded each month in the Eastern U.S., there are usually not enough events to map out and associate them with a specific fault, so the hypothesis had not been well tested. Here’s what happens when an earthquake hits an unsuspecting region. The M5.8 earthquake occurred near Mineral, Virginia, and provided scientists with a rare opportunity to record, observe, and analyze data that had previously not been available for this part of the U.S. The focus was 60 kilometres (37 mi) northwest of Richmond and 8 kilometres (5 mi) from the town of Mineral, Virginia. The Virginia Earthquake of August 23, 2011 The magnitude 5.8 earthquake that struck Louisa County was among the largest to occur along the eastern seaboard of the United States. August 31, 2011 by Roy-Z. Central Virginia Earthquake: Source . This was a result from a magnitude 5.8 earthquake in Virginia on August 23, 2011. [31] The earthquake knocked off four of the six spires atop the Washington D.C. Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This was only the second magnitude 5.8 in the last last 114 years. Parameters and Historical Perspective. Office workers evacuated from buildings near Foley Square stand outside after a … This allowed engineers to see if the rails were damaged. Posted on September 12, 2011 1:41 am UTC by mitnse. According to the United States Geological Survey, the 5.8 magnitude earthquake occurred at 1:51:04 PM at the epicenter near Mineral, Virginia. Watch video interviews with four people discussing their experiences near the epicenter of the magnitude 5.8 earthquake in central Virginia on August 23, 2011. We illustrate some general aspects of such earthquakes and … The temblor was the strongest east … Ground shaking due to earthquakes in the eastern United States (EUS) is felt at significantly greater distances than in the western United States (WUS) and for some earthquakes it has been shown to display a strong preferential direction. Raw DYFI data suggest some general patterns, including significant apparent amplification of seismic waves along Chesapeake Bay, in parts of the District of Columbia (D.C.) and elsewhere, as well as a southwest-northeast directionality to the earthquake rupture and more efficient seismic wave propagation along the predominantly SW-NE-trending geologic structure. This tied up the AT&T and Verizon Wireless networks. The event triggered landslides over a wider area than … [29][30] The National Park Service found cracks near the top of the Washington Monument. East Coast Earthquake refers to the seismic activity that occurred across the east coast of the United States on August 23rd, 2011. This discrepancy is due to the older and denser rocks of the earth's crust on the East Coast that seismic waves can travel through more efficiently without losing energy. I know, earthquakes happen all of the time. http://miahz.com/2011/08/earthquake/*This is the only live video shot during the earthquake that i've seen so far. [4][5][6][7] About 35 hours after the main earthquake, a sixth aftershock of magnitude 4.5 occurred. The 2011 Virginia Earthquake On August 23, a magnitude 5.8 earthquake struck the Piedmont region of the U.S. East Coast near Mineral, Virginia. This page was last changed on 20 March 2021, at 16:59. Most common … ; 2012; Article; Journal; Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union; Horton, J. Wright, Jr.; Williams, Robert A. As a result, it gives us an exciting opportunity to learn more about what’s going on. Let’s have a look at how it felt in various places:. Unlike California, which is situated on the western edge of the North American plate grinding along the very active San Andreas fault, the East Coast of the U.S. is on part of the North American tectonic plate that has been relatively passive during recent geologic time. 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