# Earthquake in Mineral Springs, VA



## pyrguy (Aug 23, 2011)

Just heard a 5.8 quake about an hour ago. No reported major damage and no reported injuries.

Peach did it rock your world??


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## Mark K (Aug 23, 2011)

Now maybe people will believe in earthquakes.


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## fatboy (Aug 23, 2011)

Us too! (Well, not close to me)

http://www.greeleytribune.com/article/20110823/NEWS/110829994/1051&ParentProfile=1001


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## mtlogcabin (Aug 23, 2011)

A 5.8 and the epicenter was either an A or B seismic zone


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## JAT (Aug 23, 2011)

felt in NE,NC OHIO


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## mark handler (Aug 23, 2011)

Less than 6, we don't even blink on the west coast.....


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## steveray (Aug 23, 2011)

My fathers bookcases were shaking in Manchester CT....


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## pyrguy (Aug 23, 2011)

Some people felt in here in South Carolina. But the wife and I didn't feel a thing.


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## RJJ (Aug 23, 2011)

We had a little shake.


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## pwood (Aug 23, 2011)

mark handler said:
			
		

> Less than 6, we don't even blink on the west coast.....


  mere flatulance on the sphincter scale here!


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## beach (Aug 23, 2011)

> Less than 6, we don't even blink on the west coast.....


I emailed a friend earlier who moved to VA a few years ago from Cali, he emailed back: "People were screaming, I was laughing my a$$ off at them."


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## DRP (Aug 23, 2011)

Just heard about it on the way home, never felt it.

I've got one former client between Mineral and the lake, any Louisa folks here?


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## KZQuixote (Aug 23, 2011)

My sister, who lives in the district reported:

Guys - With all due respect to Japan, it was unbelievable, at least for this area.  Now, they are saying it was a 5.9.  I was in the front yard, down on my haunches gardening and it almost knocked me (with all my inertia) off my feet.  I looked up and the big houses to our right moved back and forth considerably, like they were in a wild, shaking wave.  Simultaneously, there was a loud, but low train/helicopter-like rumble.  I honestly thought there was a bombing and lost my cool a little.  Selkie flew out of her cat door like she was shot out of a cannon and took refuge back in the woods.  Just a little while ago, she reappeared.

So far, no injuries reported, but the Washington National Cathedral (the highest building in the city) suffered damage to one of its flying buttresses and a couple of its pinnacles, whatever they are.  I think spires might be a better word.

What a day,

Lois


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## Frank (Aug 24, 2011)

I live about 10 miles from epicenter and had some things fall off shelves.

We have scattered reports of damage mostly cracks in unreinforced masonary and a few fallen chimneys--some of which are prewar and precode construction.

It did knock out grid power to the North Anna Nuclear power station--is back on now.

Louisa HS did have 6 minor injuries--i suspect from falling ceiling tile.  In the area about a half dozed required hospitalization.

In that this is our record setting design event it confirms that we dont need to worry much about earthquakes as wind still controls design.

FYI the area is called Mineral due to historic mining in the area no springs

Now off to do some damage assesments


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## brudgers (Aug 24, 2011)

The dogs noticed it.

I didn't.


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## Codegeek (Aug 24, 2011)

Earthquake, hurricane - is there a volcano in the area of the east coast?  They say everything comes in threes.


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## jar546 (Aug 24, 2011)

I was in the 3rd floor of my 5 story masonry office building.  We were shaking, rattling and rolling.  The engineers on the 2nd floor were piling out of their office as we were going down the stairwell.


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## steveray (Aug 24, 2011)

Codegeek said:
			
		

> Earthquake, hurricane - is there a volcano in the area of the east coast?  They say everything comes in threes.


We already had the tornado earier this summer.....we are all set...


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## Alias (Aug 24, 2011)

Had a 3.3 here on the 9th, no one really noticed it, had a tornado in the central valley earlier this year, and I'm keeping an eye on Lassen and Shasta.........a good pyroclastic explosion can really ruin a person's day.........


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## Oldfieldguy (Aug 24, 2011)

That's nothing. We just broke the record for the most 100F days ever recorded by the National Weather Service yesterday. And it looks like we're going to suffer a few more days of this heat. We haven't seen rain for over 4 months.


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## Mark K (Aug 24, 2011)

For those who believe that because they survived the earthquake with little damage that they do not have a problem I suggest you re-think

Not all future earthquakes will be the same magnitude or smaller.  Remember in Japan they did not expect an earthquake as large as the one they got.  Earthquakes do not happen often so it takes a long time to get any accurate statistical data.

Even if the next earthquake will be no larger the damage can be cumulative.  Some structures that "survived" this earthquake will be damaged and will have problems due to lesser loading in the future.

If you are located a good distance from the source of this earthquake you may have a false sense of security since you may be subject to larger shaking from another earthquake source.

You will probably have a lot of chimmney damage that is not obvious.


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## DRP (Aug 24, 2011)

Thanks for the update Frank. All I have on my client from about 15 years ago is the snail mail adress so haven't heard anything. Not too worried, it was a well connected dovetail cabin, in fact the first from a brand new state of the art Hundegger hereabouts. I had 11 saws on the deck at different settings to correct their jigsaw puzzle of computer controlled cuts. The clay soil on the jobsite in Mineral was interesting, chunks of what I believe was sulfer embedded in it, bright yellow.

I'm about 200 mi SW. I was visiting with an engineer friend after work today and asked whether they felt it as they are just across the valley from where we are working. They both felt it and had some rattling but as we talked he brought up an interesting point, our current project is on superior walls on a gravel footing. We were probably decoupled from the shaking. Which was a good thing, my wife was 4 bucks up on wheeled scaffold sanding and oiling beams at the time. Got an email from my Mom, my aunt in Lynchburg said she dove under the rolltop desk only to realize she was doing the ostrich, head down, tail up and in the breeze   .

We were talking about cross laminated timber on the forum about a week ago, I had been reading some, they perform quite well on the shake table.


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## mark handler (Aug 26, 2011)

Friday, August 26, 2011

Earthquake unlikely to shake up building standards

‘It would just be too cost-prohibitive,’ official says

by margie hyslop, Staff Writer

Although engineering experts and officials across the state continue to evaluate damage from the 5.8-magnitude earthquake that gave Maryland its greatest shake in more than a century, they say few, if any, changes in building standards likely are warranted.

Most reported damage has been superficial rather than structural, state and local officials said.

State Highway Administration inspectors have checked critical components of bridges and overpasses and have found “nothing at all of concern” and no sinkholes, said Charlie Gischlar, a spokesman for the agency.

Yunfeng Zhang, associate professor at the A. James Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park, said modern seismic code “so far has been serving well.” The decade of the 1970s was the watershed in seismic design, he said.

Seismic codes for construction were established to save lives, not preserve buildings, Zhang said. Zhang, who specializes in seismic and structural engineering, added that in this region, most structures are built at the lowest range for seismic risk.

In the past 11 years, most local governments have adopted the International Building Code, which includes seismic considerations, to replace earlier regional standards, and some have added local amendments.

Building code requirements differ for structures based on where they are located, said Bob Frances, director of the Howard County Department of Inspections, Licenses and Permits. For example, homes in Howard County do not need to stand up to the same wind load as those in Ocean City, which is more likely to face hurricane-force winds, he said.

Just building to code makes provides a building with some resistance to earthquakes, said Ed Tudor, director of development review and permitting for Worcester County, which includes Ocean City.

“[in] a well-built, well-inspected building, you’re in pretty good shape,” he said. “Is that to say we’ll never have any earthquake damage, ever? No.”

Requiring new construction in Maryland to withstand major earthquakes does not make sense, Tudor said.

“You can’t possibly have requirements for every possible contingency,” he said. “It would just be too cost-prohibitive.”

In many cases, the bricks and stone that fell in parts of the region during Tuesday’s earthquake posed more risk to people outside than inside buildings.

Although bricks and masonry are not good at withstanding earthquakes by themselves — which makes older and historic buildings a concern — they can hold up well with steel reinforcement, Zhang said.

Around the region

In Annapolis, the State Archives building suffered some superficial masonry cracks and loose mortar, but no structural damage, said Bart L. Thomas, assistant secretary of facilities planning, design and construction for the Department of General Services.

In the State House, built in 1779, some plaster cracked in an office on the second floor, but dome repairs were not compromised and workers, secured by harnesses, stayed on the job for more than an hour-and-a-half after the shaking stopped.

Structural engineers detected no damage to government buildings in Baltimore, Thomas said.

Most buildings in Montgomery County should be able to withstand a moderate earthquake, such as this week’s, said Hadi Mansouri, a structural engineer who is acting director of permitting services for the county.

The ballroom at the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel and Conference Center, completed in 2004 as a partnership between Marriott and Montgomery County government, flooded after the quake, when caps came off sprinklers and sent water flowing, soaking the carpet.

Parts of a suspended decorative ceiling also came down in the conference center’s restaurant.

But there was no structural damage and, although a ballroom event was canceled, guests are staying in the hotel and eating in the lounge, said Tina Benjamin, director of special projects for the county’s Department of Economic Development.

But developers have told her that “they think in the next week [people] will see bits and pieces [of damage] they did not see before,” Benjamin sai

In Prince George’s County, the public schools, which opened for the year Monday, remained closed Thursday while engineers assessed structural safety at 32 buildings.

And two apartment buildings in Temple Hills were condemned and remained closed Thursday while residents waiting to return were offered shelter at the Hillcrest Heights Community Center.

Despite the temporary upheaval, environmental resources Director Samuel Wynkoop thinks Tuesday’s earthquake is unlikely to result in changes to building standards, said Prince George’s County spokesman Scott Peterson.

As a result of Tuesday’s earthquake, scientists and engineers will continue to learn and will see how the data compare to assumptions, Zhang said.

Even though California residents weather temblors like Tuesday’s regularly, the older, colder, harder bedrock in Eastern states carries the shaking farther from the quake’s epicenter, Zhang said.

That means that an earthquake on the East Coast can cause damage across a wider area than on the West Coast, where more numerous bedrock fractures also limit how far the shaking travels.

Although a lot of older buildings are not designed to withstand earthquakes, wooden buildings often are more flexible and ride out the shaking in better shape.

mhyslop@gazette.net

Staff writers C. Benjamin Ford and Andrew Ujifusa contributed to this report.

http://www.gazette.net/article/20110826/NEWS/708269645/1034/earthquake-unlikely-to-shake-up-building-standards&template=gazette


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## peach (Aug 27, 2011)

It was surprising, that's for sure.. the Washington Business Journal ran an article yesterday about re-thinking seismic codes (we're B for commercial structures).  One drawer fell out of my jewelry box.. that was it.  Different kind of quake than on the left coast.. more like one big rock moving rather than waves, so you either felt it or you didn't.  More concerned about Irene taking aim at my kid in Jersey City.  Had one call for a structural assessment of earthquake damage.  My elevator inspector was ON TOP of a car doing an inspection... he was pretty well freaked out.


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## RJJ (Aug 27, 2011)

YA just a little shaking! I was inspecting weld on steel connections. They past!


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## Daddy-0- (Sep 3, 2011)

I was in the truck and I thought that it dropped a couple of cylinders. I did not realize that it was an earthquake until people started running up to the county vehicle. At my house we had a little chimney damage and lost a few slate roof shingles.


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