Earthquake tremors were felt throughout North Carolina on Tuesday afternoon due to an earthquake that hit Virginia about 38 miles outside of Richmond.
The earthquake, which the United States Geological Survey reported having preliminary magnitude of 6.7, is potentially the second largest East Coast earthquake in recorded history. The largest earthquake recorded happened in 1886 in Charleston, SC and killed 60 people, according to the USGS .
The last time an earthquake of comparable magnitude occurred in NC was almost a century ago in Waynesville , NC, at a magnitude of 5.2.
Ji-young Shin, a freshman in chemistry, describedthe experience as somewhat surreal. Shin was on the first floor of D.H . Hill.
“I felt like everything was moving but everyone was so calm. I thought I was the crazy one,” Shin said.
Graduate student in food bioprocessing and nutrition sciences Johari Jordan was in the food science-building lab and saw more dramatic effects.
“We all kind of felt it and braced ourselves. When we looked at each other we realized it was an earthquake so we were trying to get everything together and get out…it really got your adrenaline pumping,” Jordan said.
Some students, like Stephanie Phillips, a junior in middle school science education, were higher up in buildings and felt the effects more easily.
“I was in my classroom on the third floor of Poe and I started feeling a shaking almost like a train was going by,” Phillips said.
Governor Bev Purdue, who was in Greensboro, said she was equally surprised and confused until she, like many others, turned to her cell phone for information.
“I had no idea what was going on until I looked at a Blackberry and saw it,” Purdue said. “Who would have thought we would be talking about an earthquake and a hurricane in the same press briefing.”
Purdue went on to say that as of Tuesday afternoon there were no reported damages or injuries.
“There have been no requests for any kind of assistance anywhere in the state,” Purdue said. “It is something really unusual, but it does not seem to have damaged anything significant.”
Del Bohnenstiehl , an assistant professor of geophysics, was in the middle of a lecture when the quake hit Raleigh. The graduate level geology class was actually discussing earthquakes when the projector screen started to shake.
“My first reaction was that it was construction since earthquakes are so rare around here,” Bohnenstiehl said.
Bohnenstiehl added that while NC does get a magnitude four or five earthquake every few decades, to have a 5.9-magnitude quake occur so close is not something one sees every day. This is because the fault lines around NC are fairly stable, though Bohnenstiehl pointed out that Tuesday’s earthquake was a reminder that they aren’t completely inactive.
“We’re a lower hazard here, and as a result we don’t have much monitoring equipment,” he said.
