Did you feel anything?
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DAYTON — An earthquake centered in Virginia could be felt in Dayton and the Miami Valley this afternoon.
A 5.9-magnitude quake could be felt in homes in Moraine and offices in downtown Dayton, in Franklin in Warren County, into Fairborn and Xenia in Greene County and in Clark and Champaign counties, too.
The Montgomery County administration building downtown was evacuated.
Cathy Petersen, spokeswoman for the Montgomery County Commission, said commissioners were meeting when the building began to sway.
The first indication of a problem was the sound of breaking glass just before 2 p.m.
“I think it was just the movement of the building, because the glass didn’t break,” Petersen said.
The building swayed for about three seconds, then stopped, but quickly started again.
“The first time the building swayed it happened so quickly, I thought 'did I feel that,’” said Peterson, who was on the 10th floor of the Montgomery County Administration with about 30 others during a county commission meeting.
The second time the building moved much longer.
“It felt like the building was swaying for 15 seconds. It felt like a lifetime,” Petersen said.
Montgomery County Administrator Deb Feldman pulled the fire alarm in the County Administration building just before 2 p.m., after the 11-story building swayed the second time. The building with about 800 employees was evacuated for about 20 minutes while the Dayton Fire Department and building maintenance staff made sure the structure was safe.
“We felt it down here in Miamisburg. It shook the building a little bit. It was noticeable,” said Montgomery County Sheriff Sgt. Scott Chapman, who is based at the county’s Regional Dispatch Center at 450 Vantage Point Drive.
There have been no other emergency calls, he added. The exact time the quake hit was reported as 1:50 p.m. The shaking lasted 45 seconds.
Carole Staruch, a secretary at Wright State University, said she felt the quake in her office on the second floor of Millett Hall. “We have large windows and we have airplanes coming from the base. I thought it was one airplane. It just felt like the building was swaying and it continued for several seconds. There was some creaking also in the building.”
Sheila Ousley of Dayton said the walls were moving back and forth in her 11th floor home atop the First Place Luxury Apartments building at 330 W. First St.
“The curtains were swaying and the TV was inching its way off of the counter and the lamps were swaying,” Ousley said. “I’ve been in earthquakes before, but it was unnerving.”
Michael Anderson of Dayton was in his fourth-floor apartment in downtown Dayton.
The retired film industry employee lived in California for 30 years, but never experienced an earthquake. “I retire from the movies, I move to Dayton, Ohio, and I get shook. Thirty years in California, nothing. Dayton, Ohio, I’m shook!”
He said the recliner in which he was seated started to roll across the floor, and his window blinds swayed.
“I’m four stories up. At first I thought something hit the building. Then I thought a bomb. But it shook for 10 seconds and then it just stopped. I thought, 'That’s good.’ Then I stood up and it shook again. That’s when I grabbed the chair because I thought it was going to fall over.”
“It was like seasickness. Left to right; it was the oddest feeling.”
Hundreds of people called the Dayton Daily News or posted comments on the paper’s Facebook page about feeling the quake.
The quake could be felt in McLean, Va., headquarters of USA Today, the newspaper said. “It caused the building to sway. Some items could be heard falling from shelves. A number of employees left the building,” it said.
There were no reports of injuries or widespread damage.
At about 1:58 p.m. the offices housing the Washington bureau for the Dayton Daily News and Columbus Dispatch shook for what appeared to be about 30 seconds. Jack Torry of the Daily News’ Washington bureau said security immediately evacuated the building, which is near the U.S. Capitol, and houses the Cox television bureau and the offices for Fox TV, the NBC news channel, CNBC, and C-Span. No one was injured, Torry said, but police secured the perimeter and did not allow anyone back in the building out of concern for aftershocks.
No damage reports were reported from around Ohio, said the Ohio Emergency Management Agency in Columbus, but assessments continued Tuesday afternoon.
Reuters reported that the 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.
The Associated Press reported that the Pentagon was being evacuated minutes before 2 p.m.
David Dominic, professor and chair of the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Wright State University, called the quake “a pretty big one for where it is.”
Quakes of that size are not that common in the region, only a handful in the past century, he said.
One of the largest quakes ever recorded on the eastern seaboard hit Charleston, S.C., in 1886. It measured an estimated 7 in magnitude.
A 5.3 quake hit Colorado at 11:46 p.m. Mountain Time Monday. It is not related to the Virginia quake because there is no geologic link, Dominic said.
Dominic said he doesn’t believe there’s been an uptick in earthquake frequency worldwide, although he said you could have that impression because media are better at publicizing quakes.
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