Preliminary Earthquake Report
Magnitude 2.4 VIRGINIA
Tuesday, July 31, 2012 at 04:43:02 UTC
One Year Later: Remembering the Louisa Earthquake
Posted: Aug 23, 2012 12:11 PM EDT
The 5.8 magnitude earthquake struck in the afternoon, when school was in session. During the quake, and in the hours following, students were understandably shaken.
4th grade teacher Tonisha Short said, "While they are sitting on the ground, the ground is rumbling underneath them. And the only thing they were asking me, in addition to ‘Where's my sister?', ‘Where's my mom?', ‘Is my mom OK?' was ‘Is the ground going to keep shaking?' It hurt me to know that I didn't have an answer."
The rumbling rendered both Louisa County High School and Thomas Jefferson Elementary School useless. In all, Louisa County school buildings had a total of $61 million in damages.
Thursday Louisa County schools marked the quake by giving a tour of the temporary facilities and the elementary school, followed by an earthquake drill for all schools. The high school has invested in 22 trailers that house classrooms, administrative offices, and even a cafeteria. Principal Tom Smith says things are starting to get back to normal.
"We're sort of back to what we normally do. They've started demolition on the building, the high school building, hopefully in a couple of years, two or three years we'll be in a real regular building at this point," he said.
Plans to build a new high school and elementary school are moving forward; both will be built on the sites of the existing schools.
The elementary school will be nearly identical to the recently built Moss - Nuckols Elementary. Since there is already a design in place for the elementary school, the goal is for elementary students to be in their new school at the start of the 2014 school year.
2011 Virginia earthquake felt by third of U.S.
A map shows the wide reach of the 2011 Virginia
earthquake. (USGS)
(LiveScience) Nearly a third of the U.S. population reported feeling the
earthquake that struck Virginia last year, probably more than any other
earthquake in U.S. history, researchers say.
The magnitude 5.8 quake that struck near Mineral, Va., nearly a year ago on
Aug. 23, 2011, was felt from Maine to Florida, from Cape Cod to Chicago, and was
among the largest ever recorded on the Eastern Seaboard. Damage from the
earthquake was relatively light, but effects were nevertheless seen at two
landmarks in Washington: the
Washington Monument and the National Cathedral.
Although the quake did not wreak significant harm, scientists nevertheless
wanted to investigate what effects it had. Such work can shed light on what
damage pattern the United States might expect if another earthquake as large or
larger happens again in this region.
Key information on the quake came from the U.S. Geological Survey's website,
"Did you feel it?" which lets people report when and where they felt a temblor
and its intensity. About 148,000 people from more than 3,400 ZIP codes gave
responses regarding the Virginia quake, breaking the site record by more than
70,000 responses since it went online in 2000.
Broad reach
All told, scientists determined that the earthquake was felt as far west as
the Mississippi River, as far south as northern Florida and as far north as
southeastern Canada. The geologic properties of the rock east of the Rocky
Mountains cause seismic waves from earthquakes in the eastern United States to
propagate more strongly to greater distances from the epicenter than seismic
waves in the western part of the country, researchers said.
Since the
Virginia earthquake shook several cities, including Baltimore, Philadelphia,
New York and Washington, tens of millions of city dwellers probably felt the
quake, the scientists estimated. Overall, they say, approximately 100 million
people may have felt the quake -- nearly a third of the U.S. population --
meaning it was probably felt by more people than any other temblor in U.S.
history.
Within days of the quake, the earthquake research community dispatched
seismographs and other monitoring equipment near the quake's source, collecting
data on the aftershocks. "This eventually produced the best recorded aftershock
sequence in the eastern U.S.," researcher Wright Horton, a geologist at the U.S.
Geological Survey National Center in Reston, Va., told OurAmazingPlanet.
LOUISA, VA (WWBT) – Earthquake experts from
California are in Louisa County this week, getting their first
up-close look at the damage caused by the 5.8 magnitude ...
www.nbc12.com/.../fema-
Last Earthquake in ... Preliminary Earthquake Report Magnitude 2.4 VIRGINIA Tuesday, July 31, 2012 at 04:43:02 UTC
earthquake.usgs.gov/.../states/states_More results from earthquake.usgs.gov »
[Mar 26, 2012] WASHINGTON -- A mild 3.1 magnitude earthquake rocked much of Central Virginia late Sunday night near the epicenter of the August 2011 5.8 magnitude temblor ... ( 321 Comments )
Seven months after a
5.8-magnitude earthquake struck Mineral, Va. and rattled much of
the East Coast, a smaller quake shook the same area late Sunday night
...
Aftershocks Virginia + 116 “I Have Felt It” reports (September 1, 2011)
| SRC | Location | UTC Date/time | M | D | INFORMATION | |
| USGS | Virginia | Apr 03 19:00 PM | 2.5 | 6.3 | MAP | I Felt It |
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| USGS | Virginia | Apr 03 19:00 PM | 2.5 | 9.6 | MAP | I Felt It |
| USGS | Virginia | Mar 26 03:21 AM | 3.1 | 7.8 | MAP | I Felt It |
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| USGS | Virginia | Mar 26 03:21 AM | 3.1 | 5.0 | MAP | I Felt It |
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| USGS | West Virginia | Feb 22 12:49 PM | 3.4 | 5.0 | MAP | I Felt It |
| USGS | Virginia | Feb 19 07:12 AM | 2.7 | 5.0 | MAP | I Felt It |
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| USGS | Virginia | Jan 30 23:39 PM | 3.2 | 3.0 | MAP | I Felt It |
| USGS | Virginia | Jan 30 23:39 PM | 3.2 | 7.5 | MAP | I Felt It |
| USGS | Virginia | Jan 18 21:03 PM | 2.5 | 4.9 | MAP | I Felt It |
| USGS | Virginia | Jan 18 13:08 PM | 2.5 | 1.2 | MAP | I Felt It |
