Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 15, 1991 TAG: 9103150927
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A/1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
Authorities said there were no reports of injuries in the tremor, and few reports of damage.
"The only damage reports I got were the ones I made myself - just cracks in the wall," said James Frazier, a dispatcher at the Goochland County Sheriff's Department. "But I'm not sure whether they were here previously to the quake."
Frazier said he was in the communications center when the walls started shaking around 2 a.m.
"It sounded like the building was coming down around my head," he said. "It started out as really low rumbling and progressively got worse. It shook for about two seconds, but the noise lasted about four seconds."
Frazier said he received dozens of phone calls from residents, many of whom said they were awakened by the tremor.
Jennifer Bone of Fluvanna County said the tremor jarred her and her husband awake "from a sound sleep.
"He felt the rumble and I heard the noise," she said. "The dog barked and the glass tinkled."
The National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo., confirmed that a quake struck at 1:54 a.m.
The approximate center was at latitude 37.9 degrees north and longitude 78.1 degrees west, or about 40 miles northwest of Richmond and 25 miles southeast of Charlottesville.
Rebecca Phipps of the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston said the quake was felt as far east as Richmond and as far west as Staunton, a radius of about 100 miles.
The Richter scale is a measure of ground motion as recorded on seismographs. Every increase of one number means a tenfold increase in magnitude. Thus a reading of 7.5 reflects an earthquake 10 times stronger than one of 6.5.
An earthquake of 3.5 on the Richter scale can cause slight damage in the local area.
The area between Charlottesville and Richmond is in the Central Virginia Seismic Zone, an area of low-level but persistent seismic activity, said Matthew Sibol, research associate at the Virginia Tech Seismological Observatory in Blacksburg.
"This one is a little larger than normal," he said.
The last quake roughly equivalent in size measured 4.2 near Charlottesville in 1984. No one was injured and little damage was reported.
"It would be very unusual of a 3.5 to cause any damage other than some knocked-off glasses or rattling of windows," Sibol said.
The largest earthquake recorded in central Virginia occurred in 1875, Sibol said. The quake, which measured about 5 on the Richter scale, knocked down chimneys and brick walls and was felt in Maryland and North Carolina.
A University of Virginia physics professor said he was worried by the proximity of today's quake to Virginia Power's North Anna nuclear plant, which is about 30 miles northeast of Charlottesville.
Donal Day, a longtime critic of nuclear power plants, said the earthquake should prompt an inspection of the plant.
"I think at this stage they should shut down and inspect," Day said.
by CNB