18.05.12

1) Shake, rattle and roll: quake

Tuesday, Aug. 23 began as a normal end-of-summer day. Area children prepared to return to school that following Wednesday, and Sen. Mark Warner was in town to tour the Library of Congress Packard Campus on Mount Pony.

Just minutes before he reached his destination – at 1:51 p.m. – all hell broke loose as “the Central Virginia Seismic Zone” suddenly became very active. Centered in Mineral in Louisa County, just 36 miles away down U.S. 522, the 5.8-magnitude earthquake cracked historic buildings, toppled chimneys, shattered windowpanes and generally put everyone on edge for weeks.

At first, local residents — unaccustomed to earthquakes of that magnitude — alternately thought a plane had crashed, or a freight train. Others described violent shaking, reporting falling bricks and collapsed roofs. Miraculously, no one was hurt during the most substantial Virginia quake in more than a century.

Source: Culpeper Star Exponent