Magnitude 5.9 Earthquake Rattles Pentagon

WASHINGTON, Aug. 23, 2011 — Oper­a­tions con­tin­ued at the Pen­ta­gon despite the mag­ni­tude 5.9 earth­quake cen­tered in Min­er­al, Va., today.

 -
A “shakemap” of the Aug. 23, 2011, cen­tral Vir­ginia mag­ni­tude 5.9 earth­quake.
U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey graph­ic
Click to enlarge

The Nation­al Mil­i­tary Com­mand Cen­ter in the build­ing “main­tained the watch, and there was no loss of com­mu­ni­ca­tions,” said Navy Cmdr. Patrick McNal­ly, a spokesman for the Joint Staff. 

Some pho­tos were knocked off walls in the build­ing dur­ing the mid-after­noon quake, and a water pipe on the building’s third floor burst, but plant engi­neers were able to stop the del­uge, Pen­ta­gon Force Pro­tec­tion Agency offi­cials said. 

Many offices did evac­u­ate the build­ing, but offi­cials gave the all-clear to return after about 15 minutes. 

The earth­quake occurred at a depth of about 1 kilo­me­ter, about 27 miles east of Char­lottesville, 34 miles south­west of Fred­er­icks­burg and 39 miles north­west of Rich­mond, all in Virginia. 

The last time a mag­ni­tude 5.9 earth­quake hap­pened in Vir­ginia was in Giles Coun­ty, near Blacks­burg, in May 1897, accord­ing to the U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Survey. 

Though it’s not as well known as the San Andreas seis­mic zone in Cal­i­for­nia, there is a seis­mic zone in cen­tral Vir­ginia. The near­est tec­ton­ic plate bound­aries, which tend to gen­er­ate large and more fre­quent earth­quakes, are in the cen­ter of the Atlantic Ocean and in the Caribbean Sea, USGS offi­cials said. 

The cen­tral Vir­ginia seis­mic zone has known faults, offi­cials added, but prob­a­bly has many unde­tect­ed small­er and deeply buried faults. Because of these faults, peo­ple in cen­tral Vir­ginia have felt small earth­quakes and suf­fered dam­age from a few larg­er ones since at least 1774, accord­ing to the U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Survey. 

In 1875, a mag­ni­tude 4.8 earth­quake struck in the cen­tral Vir­ginia zone. Every year or two, small­er earth­quakes hap­pen in the region. 

East Coast earth­quakes are less fre­quent than West Coast tem­blors, but they tend to be shal­low­er, and there­fore, they can be felt over a larg­er region, USGS offi­cials said. 

East of the Rocky Moun­tains, an earth­quake can be felt over an area as much as 10 times larg­er than a sim­i­lar mag­ni­tude earth­quake on the West Coast. Today’s mag­ni­tude 5.9 earth­quake could be felt as far away as Geor­gia, the Car­oli­nas, Ten­nessee, Ohio, Illi­nois, New York and Massachusetts. 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs) 

Face­book and/or on Twit­ter

Team GlobDef

Seit 2001 ist GlobalDefence.net im Internet unterwegs, um mit eigenen Analysen, interessanten Kooperationen und umfassenden Informationen für einen spannenden Überblick der Weltlage zu sorgen. GlobalDefence.net war dabei die erste deutschsprachige Internetseite, die mit dem Schwerpunkt Sicherheitspolitik außerhalb von Hochschulen oder Instituten aufgetreten ist.

Alle Beiträge ansehen von Team GlobDef →