W.VA. IS SHAKEN BY . . . WHAT? AUTHORITIES CANNOT ACCOUNT FOR SOURCE OF

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, February 16, 1993                   TAG: 9302160131
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BECKLEY, W.VA.                                LENGTH: Medium
W.VA. IS SHAKEN BY . . . WHAT? AUTHORITIES CANNOT ACCOUNT FOR SOURCE OF
Hundreds of people in six southern West Virginia counties reported feeling the earth shake and hearing a thunder-like sound Monday evening, authorities said.
Sheriff's and emergency officials in Raleigh and Fayette counties said they did not immediately know the source of the noise and tremors.
Authorities in those counties were investigating, said Scott Tygrett, dispatcher for the Fayette County sheriff's office.
Brian Fox, an announcer at WJLS radio in Beckley, said he had between 400 and 500 calls from Raleigh, Fayette, Summers, Greenbrier, Boone and Wyoming counties about the tremor.
"A lot of people are saying it shook their whole house, that it felt like a wave coming through," Fox said. "One guy said . . . it sounded like a bomb went off. He thought his neighbors' house had exploded."
John Price, news director at Oak Hill television station WOAY-TV, said dozens of calls began coming in shortly after 6:30 p.m.
A spokeswoman for the Raleigh County Sheriff's Department, who wouldn't give her name, said she heard what she thought was thunder in her basement office in Beckley.
She said people have "been calling in a panic. They don't know what's going on, we don't know what's going on."
A seismologist at the U.S. Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo., which tracks earthquakes worldwide, said he saw no evidence of such activity in West Virginia.
"I didn't see a thing that looked like an earthquake," said duty geophysicist John Minsch.
Minsch said the disturbance could have been a sonic boom, which he said is often mistaken for a quake.
Federal Aviation Administration officials in Charleston said they received no reports of a sonic boom in southern West Virginia.
Steve Webber, director of the state's Office of Miners' Health, Safety and Training, said his agency had received no reports of any mine accidents that might account for the disturbance.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB