Tag Archives: Virginia

Editors Note: 5.9 Magnitude Earthquake

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Hi Everyone. There are times when it appears as if calamity is on every side, and you wonder when the trials will be over. I ask for your prayers for my family in Virginia, Washington, D.C. and North Carolina–and my husband’s family in New York State and our prayers go out to other families impacted by the earthquake. Colorado also experienced a 5.9 earthquake. Although there is minimal damage, I know that they were and are frightened by this occurrence. I lived on the East Coast for 39 years, and what we saw mostly was hurricanes. The world at large is now experiencing devastating weather and events that leave you wondering, “Will I be next?

Faith and trust in The Lord are what holds us together in extremity. Fervent prayer brings results. The east coast was hit earlier this summer with storms, this is just another incident that could have been much worse.

Thank You, Momma Cha

Earthquake Strikes Eastern Seaboard by Liz Goodwin…

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J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo
Office workers gather on the sidewalk in front of Building…

 

Earthquake strikes Eastern seaboard
By Liz Goodwin

National Affairs Reporter
By Liz Goodwin | The Lookout – 3 hrs ago

A 5.8-magnitude earthquake struck Mineral, Virginia, 87 miles outside of Washington, D.C., today. You can see the White House appear to shake as the Secret Service walks on its roof in the video above.

Shaking could be felt from Toronto to New York all the way to North Carolina at close to 2 p.m. this afternoon. The quake lasted 45 seconds, and is one of the largest ever to hit the East Coast.

The Pentagon, Capitol and White House were all evacuated, according to the Associated Press.

Roll Call says the Capitol was evacuated after staffers saw “chandeliers…swinging from side to side.” According to an eyewitness on Twitter, the National Cathedral is damaged, with some of its stones falling off altogether.

But no fatalities have been reported so far, and the damage appears to be relatively minimal.

Many people trying to make cell phone calls in the area reported having trouble finding service. Craig Fugate, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, used Twitter to ask Washington residents to “try to stay off your cell phone if it is not an emergency.”

Office workers stood outside Dupont Circle in Washington, waiting to be allowed back in to their buildings after the tremor, reports Laura Rozen, who writes The Envoy blog for Yahoo! News. While there were reports that the National Monument was “tilted,” Yahoo! Ticket reporter Chris Moody went to the scene and found it looking fine. The grounds within 1,000 feet of the monument were closed, he reported.

Two nuclear reactors in Virginia were automatically shut off after the quake, but no damage has been reported, according to Reuters . A nuclear power plant near the epicenter of the quake is designed to survive up to a 6.1-magnitude quake, according to the People’s Alliance for Clean Energy.

This video shows cars crushed from falling bricks in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia:

credit: yahoo news

Earthquake Listed at 5.9 Rattles East Coast From Virginia to New Hampshire  By JESSICA HOPPER (@jesshop23) Aug. 23, 2011
A 5.9 magnitude earthquake jolted the East Coast, rattling people from Martha’s Vineyard to Washington, D.C. to North Carolina, prompting the evacuation of Congressional buildings, slowing rail and air traffic, and taking two nuclear reactors offline.

The earthquake sent people pouring out of office buildings, hospitals, the Pentagon and the State Department when it struck at 1:51 p.m. The pillars of the capitol in Washington, D.C. shook. Alarms sounded in the FBI and Department of Justice buildings, and some flooding was reported on an upper floor of the Pentagon as a result of the quake.

Parks and sidewalks in Washington were packed with people who fled their buildings. All of the monuments along the National Mall have been closed. Police on horseback kept people a safe distance from the Washington Monument and the new Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial.

National Parks Service Spokesman Jeffrey Olson told the Associated Press that there was “absolutely no damage” to the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial or other tourist destinations along the Mall.

The National Cathedral suffered damage to at least three of the cathedral’s pinnacles, Dean of the Cathedral Samuel Lloyd said. The cathedral has been cordoned off with yellow police tape as a precaution.

Officials inspected Congressional buildings before members of Congress and their staff were allowed to return to their offices.

Office workers gather on the sidewalk in downtown Washington, D.C., Aug. 23, 2011, moments after a 5.9 magnitude tremor shook the nation’s capital. The quake was felt as far north as New Hampshire and in Martha’s Vineyard where President Obama and his family are vacationing. It was felt as far south as South Carolina and as far west as Cleveland, Ohio.

The East Coast gets earthquakes from time to time, but rarely of a magnitude to make skyscrapers sway.

Paul Segall, a Stanford geophysicist who studies the structure and development of earthquake faults, called today’s shaker “a significant earthquake for that part of the world. It could do significant damage.”

“I can’t remember an event that large on the East Coast,” he said.

No significant damage or fatalities have been reported. Some injuries have been reported in Washington D.C., the fire department spokesman told the Associated Press. In New York City, the fire department said that they received a surge in calls.

Authorities in New York and Washington said cell phone traffic was so heavy that it hampered their ability to respond to emergencies. A spokesperson for the Federal Emergency Management Agency urged people to email and use text messaging instead of their cell phones for their next few hours to ease the congestion.

The epicenter of the quake was near Mineral, Va., 39 miles from Richmond, Va., and 83 miles from the nation’s capital. The quake was .6 miles deep.

According to convertalot.com, a web site which compiles measurements and calculators for a variety of statistics, the magnitude 5.9 earthquake released energy equivalent to the explosion of 10,676 tons of TNT.

Amanda Reidelbach, office manager and spokeswoman for the Louisa County Department of Emergency Services in Mineral, Va., said that the town has felt “at least a half dozen or so” aftershocks since the initial quake struck.

“There were pretty serious aftershocks,” she said. “We walked out onto the street and felt the ground just rumbling.”

There have been reports of structural damage to some residences in town, Reidelbach says, but no reports of significant injuries. Mandatory evacuations were put in place shortly after the quake with all non-essential government and county personnel were sent home for the day. Schools were also closed.

The epicenter of the quake is very close to two Dominion Power nuclear power plants, North Anna 1 and 2.

Elizabeth Stuckle, spokesperson for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said that the reactors were “automatically and safely shut down.” The plant declared an “unusual event” which is the lowest category of four emergency classifications. Back-up generators automatically kicked in to keep the reactors cool, the NRC said.

Nine other nuclear plants on the East Coast declared an “unusual event,” but were none shut down.

The tremblor affected travel in the region.

Amtrak said it was running at reduced speed and was checking tracks and terminals for damage. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority said the Metro is moving at 15 mph as inspectors check all tracks.

Flights at Dulles International Airport in Virginia, JFK International in New York and in Philadelphia were temporarily halted. Control towers at JFK and Newark International airports were temporarily evacuated. The delay will cause slow air traffic throughout the region, the Federal Aviation Administration warned. In addition, about a dozen flights were diverted from JFK to Boston.

East Coast Earthquake; Amy Winehouse Toxicology Results

A woman who works at Mineral Barber Shop in Mineral, Va. said that the inside of her shop is a mess but there doesn’t appear to be any major damage outside the town square.

In Richmond, Va., a woman who works on the 18th floor of a 20 story building said she and her co-workers left the building when the shaking first began.

“At first I thought it was someone jumping on floor above me, but then it was really loud and shaky,” she said.

People in the New York Times building on 42nd street in Manhattan said they felt the entire building shift, and watched office furniture move. As the tall buildings in New York swayed, people ran out into the street.

The New York City Criminal Court in lower Manhattan was also evacuated.

In Baltimore, Maryland, artist Lisa Lewenz was working in her basement studio when she began to feel movement under her feet.

“Everything started trembling, with a big boom sound coming up from the ground. I’ve lived in LA long enough to know this drill, so rushed upstairs, and found the glassware still shuttering for about a minute. Couldn’t get through by the phone to friends, and there was no news online, so I started worrying my house was collapsing,” Lewenz said.

Rare East Coast Earthquake Reaches 5.9 Magnitude
Since there were no serious injuries, some saw the lighter side in the unexpected quake.

Michelle Mittelstadt said, “My first earthquake! What’s next: Plague of locusts?”

Another woman who works with the Federal Aviation Administration said that the, “If you have to be evacuated for an earthquake, the National Mall is a nice spilling out point!”

The earthquake felt along the eastern corridor follows an earthquake felt Monday in Colorado. That 5.3 magnitude earthquake struck near Trinidad, Colorado.

The United States’ Geological Survey said that earthquakes have been felt in the central Virginia area since 1774.

ABC News’ Jane E. Allen, Christina Caron, Troy McMullen, Jack Cloherty, Jim Sciutto, Aaron Katersky and Dennis Powell contributed to this report.

Momma’s Source; ABC News, DSK News

Dozens of Tornadoes Kill 194 People in Five Southern States

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There are so many weather-related tragedies in the world right now of which the latest is the destruction and loss of life in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Tennesee, and Virginia. 194 people are reported dead along with the ten killed earlier in the week from another storm. So much is occurring that before one area is recovered another is under siege. Please pray for the people, families, and communities affected and for this and other nations of the world. Japan is struggling to recover as are Haiti and others.
I encourage you to continue to donate to the relief efforts as the relief agencies are hard-pressed to provide for every new situation. Momma Cha

Dozens of Tornadoes Kill 194 in 5 Southern States

AP/The Birmingham News, Don Kausler, Jr.
A funnel cloud approaches Tuscaloosa, Ala. where widespread damage has occurred from the storm.

By GREG BLUESTEIN and JAY REEVES, Associated Press Greg Bluestein And Jay Reeves, Associated Press – 34 mins ago
PLEASANT GROVE, Ala. – Dozens of tornadoes spawned by a powerful storm system wiped out entire towns across a wide swath of the South, killing at least 194 people, and officials said Thursday they expect the death toll to rise.

Alabama’s state emergency management agency said it had confirmed 128 deaths, while there were 32 in Mississippi, 15 in Tennessee, 11 in Georgia and eight in Virginia.

The National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., said it received 137 tornado reports around the regions into Wednesday night.

“We were in the bathroom holding on to each other and holding on to dear life,” said Samantha Nail, who lives in a blue-collar subdivision in the Birmingham suburb of Pleasant Grove where the storm slammed heavy pickup trucks into ditches and obliterated tidy brick houses, leaving behind a mess of mattresses, electronics and children’s toys scattered across a grassy plain where dozens used to live. “If it wasn’t for our concrete walls, our home would be gone like the rest of them.”

One of the hardest-hit areas was Tuscaloosa, a city of more than 83,000 and home to the University of Alabama. The city’s police and other emergency services were devastated, the mayor said, and at least 15 people were killed.

A massive tornado, caught on video by a news camera on a tower, barreled through the city late Wednesday afternoon, leveling it.

By nightfall, the city was dark. Roads were impassable. Signs were blown down in front of restaurants, businesses were unrecognizable and sirens wailed off and on. Debris littered the streets and sidewalks.

College students in a commercial district near campus used flashlights to check out the damage.

At Stephanie’s Flowers, owner Bronson Englebert used the headlights from two delivery vans to see what valuables he could remove. The storm blew out the front of his store, pulled down the ceiling and shattered the windows, leaving only the curtains flapping in the breeze.

“It even blew out the back wall, and I’ve got bricks on top of two delivery vans now,” Englebert said.

AP/The Decatur Daily, Gary Cosby Jr.

A group of students stopped to help Englebert, carrying out items like computers and printers and putting them in his van.

The storm system spread destruction from Texas to New York, where dozens of roads were flooded or washed out.

The governors in Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia each issued emergency declarations for parts of their states.

President Barack Obama said he had spoken with Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley and approved his request for emergency federal assistance, including search and rescue assets. About 1,400 National Guard soldiers were being deployed around the state.

“Our hearts go out to all those who have been affected by this devastation, and we commend the heroic efforts of those who have been working tirelessly to respond to this disaster,” Obama said in a statement.

Around Tuscaloosa, traffic was snarled by downed trees and power lines, and some drivers abandoned their cars in medians.

“What we faced today was massive damage on a scale we have not seen in Tuscaloosa in quite some time,” Mayor Walter Maddox said.

University officials said there didn’t appear to be significant damage on campus, and dozens of students and locals were staying at a 125-bed shelter in the campus recreation center.

The Browns Ferry nuclear power plant about 30 miles west of Huntsville lost offsite power. The Tennessee Valley Authority-owned plant had to use seven diesel generators to power the plant’s three units. The safety systems operated as needed and the emergency event was classified as the lowest of four levels, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said.

In Huntsville, meteorologists found themselves in the path of severe storms and had to take shelter in a reinforced steel room, turning over monitoring duties to a sister office in Jackson, Miss. Meteorologists saw multiple wall clouds, which sometimes spawn tornadoes, and decided to take cover, but the building wasn’t damaged.

“We have to take shelter just like the rest of the people,” said meteorologist Chelly Amin, who wasn’t at the office at the time but spoke with colleagues about the situation.

In Kemper County, Miss., in the east-central part of the state, sisters Florrie Green and Maxine McDonald, and their sister-in-law Johnnie Green, all died in a mobile home that was destroyed by a storm.

“They were thrown into those pines over there,” Mary Green, Johnnie Green’s daughter-in-law, said, pointing to a wooded area. “They had to go look for their bodies.”

In Choctaw County, Miss., a Louisiana police officer was killed Wednesday morning when a towering sweetgum tree fell onto his tent as he shielded his young daughter with his body, said Kim Korthuis, a supervisory ranger with the National Park Service. The girl wasn’t hurt.

The 9-year-old girl was brought to a motor home about 100 feet away where campsite volunteer Greg Maier was staying with his wife. He went back to check on the father and found him dead.

In a neighborhood south of Birmingham, Austin Ransdell and a friend had to hike out after the house where he was living was crushed by four trees. No one was hurt.

As he walked away from the wreckage, trees and power lines crisscrossed residential streets, and police cars and utility trucks blocked a main highway.

“The house was destroyed. We couldn’t stay in it. Water pipes broke; it was flooding the basement,” he said. “We had people coming in telling us another storm was coming in about four or five hours, so we just packed up.”

Not far away, Craig Branch was stunned by the damage.

“Every street to get into our general subdivision was blocked off,” he said. “Power lines are down; trees are all over the road. I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

The storms came on the heels of another system that killed 10 people in Arkansas and one in Mississippi earlier this week.

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Credit: Reeves reported from Tuscaloosa. Associated Press Writers Holbrook Mohr in Choctaw County, Miss.; Anna McFall and John Zenor in Montgomery; Bill Fuller and Alan Sayre in New Orleans; Dorie Turner in Atlanta and Bill Poovey in Chattanooga, Tenn., contributed to this report.
Our source: yahoonews
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At Least 44 Dead After Killer Twisters Pound South

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This one hits close to home or literally at home. I am originally from Newport News, Virginia and currently am residing in Wisconsin. My siblings and extended family live in Virginia, North Carolina, and Maryland.
I have weathered many storms at home–this is a terrible disaster for the Tidewater region. Hurricanes are normal, it is the tremendous amounts and effects of the tornadoes that make this so tragic. I have not been able to locate my relatives due to the telephone lines being down, but I will try Facebook. Please be praying for all those affected and for those who have lost family. Momma Cha

At Least 44 Dead After Killer Twisters Pound South
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By EMERY P. DALESIO and BROCK VERGAKIS, Associated Press Emery P. Dalesio And Brock Vergakis, Associated Press – 7 mins ago
SANFORD, N.C. – Lowe’s store manager Michael Hollowell had heard the tornado warnings, but his first clue that the danger was outside his front door came when he saw his staff running toward the back of the home improvement store.

More than 100 employees and customers screamed in near unison when the steel roof curled off overhead Saturday. The store was becoming part of the wreckage left by a ferocious storm system bristling with killer twisters that ripped through the South.

“You could hear all the steel ripping. People screaming in fear for their lives,” Hollowell told The Associated Press on Sunday.

Those in the store did not become part of the death toll that totaled at least 44 across six states, and officials said quick action by Hollowell and his employees helped them all make it out alive in Sanford, about 40 miles south of Raleigh.

In all of Lee County, where Sanford is located, officials said there was just one confirmed death during the storm, which claimed at least 21 lives statewide, damaged hundreds of homes and left a swath of destruction unmatched by any spring storm since the mid-1980s.

In Raleigh early Monday, authorities were blocking access to a mobile home park of about 200 homes where three children were killed. Officials planned to assess conditions after sunrise before deciding whether to allow residents to return home.

Power lines and trees still covered nearby roads. Where roads were clear, there were massive piles of debris that had been pushed to the side of the street.

Gov. Beverly Perdue spent the day touring areas in the eastern part of the state, including Bertie County, where storms were the deadliest. She met with victims, families of victims and emergency management officials.

“This is a hardly pressed economic county to start with, and as you travel through here you see people who have lost every single thing they have in life, and that takes a tremendous faith to overcome, but the faith is here,” Perdue said in Colerain. At least 11 residents of Bertie County died, officials said, including three members of the same family.

The violent weather began Thursday in Oklahoma, where two people died, before cutting across the Deep South on Friday and hitting North Carolina and Virginia on Saturday. Authorities said seven people died in Arkansas; seven in Alabama; six in Virginia; and one in Mississippi. North Carolina’s state emergency management agency said it had reports of 23 fatalities from Saturday’s storms, but local officials confirmed only 21 deaths to The Associated Press.

An apparent tornado passed near a Virginia nuclear power plant, knocking down power lines. Dominion Virginia Power said backup sources including diesel generators kept electricity going to maintain both units at its Surry Power Station. The tornado didn’t hit the two nuclear units, which are designed to withstand weather, earthquakes and hurricanes, the company said.

More than 240 tornadoes were reported from the storm system, including 62 in North Carolina, but the National Weather Service’s final numbers could be lower because some tornadoes may have been reported more than once.

Meanwhile, survivors recalled miraculous escapes.

In the Bladen County community of Ammon, about 70 miles south of Raleigh, Audrey McKoy and her husband Milton saw a tornado bearing down on them over the tops of the pine trees that surround the seven or eight mobile homes that make up their neighborhood. He glanced at a nearby farm and saw the winds lifting pigs and other animals in the sky.

“It looked just like ‘The Wizard of Oz,'” Audrey said.

They took shelter in their laundry room, and after emerging once the storm had passed, were disoriented for a moment. The twister had turned their mobile home around and they were standing in their backyard.

Milton found three bodies in their neighborhood, including 92-year-old Marchester Avery and his 50-year-old son, Tony, who died in adjacent mobile homes. He stopped his wife from coming over to see.

“You don’t want to look at this,” he told her.

The storms crushed trailer parks and brought life in the center of the state’s second-largest city to a virtual standstill. It was the worst outbreak in the state since 22 twisters in 1984 killed 42 people.

The devastation Perdue saw Sunday left her near tears, she said. The storm pummeled bustling cities and remote rural communities. One of Perdue’s stops was downtown Raleigh, where fallen trees blocked major thoroughfares and damage to the Shaw University campus forced it to cancel the remainder of its spring semester.

Perdue said she’d been in contact with President Barack Obama, who pledged his support, and that federal emergency management workers were already on the ground.

“We have in North Carolina a tremendous relationship with our federal partners, and have been through this so many times,” she said. “That’s not a good thing. That’s a bad thing.”

Jean Burkett lived near Roy and Barbara Lafferty and Barbara’s mother, Helen White, in Colerain. Burkett and Barbara Lafferty graduated from high school together in 1964 and had always been neighbors. On Sunday, at her relatively untouched home, Burkett pointed out a row of four or five about 400 yards away that had been demolished. The Laffertys and Helen White died in their home.

“The neighborhood has lost some mighty fine neighbors,” Burkett said. “It’s the worst thing we’ve ever seen.”

The conditions that allowed for the storm occur on the Great Plains maybe twice a year, but they almost never happen in North Carolina, according to Scott Sharp, a weather service meteorologist in Raleigh.

The atmosphere was unstable Saturday, which allows air to rise and fall quickly, creating winds of hurricane strength or greater. There was also plenty of moisture in the air, which fuels violent storms. Shear winds at different heights, moving in different directions, created the spin needed to create tornadoes, Sharp said.

Many of the deaths across the state occurred in mobile homes like the ones in Ammon. The three deaths in Raleigh were in a mobile home park about five miles north of downtown, which was still closed off to residents early Monday.

Census data from 2007, the latest available, estimates 14.5 percent of residences in North Carolina are mobile homes, the seventh-highest percentage in the nation and well over the U.S. average of 6.7 percent.

North Carolina officials tallied more than 130 serious injuries, 130 homes destroyed and another 700 significantly damaged by Sunday evening, according to state public safety spokeswoman Julia Jarema. Officials expect those totals to climb as damage assessments continue.

Back at the Lowe’s store, Joseph Rosser and his 13-year-old daughter, Hannah, had pulled their Chevrolet Colorado pickup off the road Saturday, seeking shelter. Instead, the store’s exterior concrete toppled, crushing the truck’s cab with both inside.

“I really didn’t see much because I had a pillow over my face to protect my head and I heard my dad tell me it was going to be OK,” Hannah said. “And then all of a sudden, I just heard a loud boom.

“My dad was lying there, telling me he was going to die,” said Hannah, her midsection wrapped in a back brace. “He sounded very hoarse like he couldn’t breathe. He was crying and was hurt really bad.”

She crawled out the truck’s shattered back window and ran around the parking lot calling for help, because her cell phone wouldn’t work. Both Rossers are recovering from their injuries.

While the death toll may climb and while it will be weeks before final damage assessments are completed, residents and officials alike are looking to make repairs and start rebuilding what was lost.

Aleta Tootle and four other people sheltered in a closet in her Bertie County home, emerging with only a few scratches after the rest of the building was ripped to shreds. Surveying the wreckage Sunday, she said there was only one thing left to do.

“All we can do is start over,” she said. “We don’t have a choice.”

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Vergakis reported from Colerain. Associated Press writers Mitch Weiss in Ammon, Tom Breen, Mike Baker and Tom Foreman Jr. in Raleigh, and Jeffrey S. Collins in Columbia, S.C., contributed to this report.

Our source: Yahoo News

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