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

DATE: MONDAY, June 26, 1995                   TAG: 9506260176
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

EARTHQUAKE RATTLES HOMES AND NERVES

Just after a minor earthquake rattled Southwest Virginia Sunday night, phones and nerves began to rattle at police stations, newspapers, radio stations and, not surprisingly, the Geological Sciences Department at Virginia Tech.

Martin Chapman, a research associate monitoring the Tech's seismographs, knew just why everyone was calling.

Chapman said the earthquake hit at 8:36 p.m. around the Smyth-Grayson County border, with Troutdale being the closest town. It registered at 3.2 on his machines, and as a 3.5 at the U.S. Geological Survey center in Golden, Colo.

"A typical earthquake for this area," Chapman said. Nothing like on the West Coast, but a pretty solid plate-rattler.

Chapman had reports that people felt the Earth move in Galax, Independence and Marion. The floor also shook in two counties just over the border in North Carolina.

Gary Snow, administrative assistant in the Grayson County Sheriff's Department, was at home when the quake hit.

``It shook the house real good,'' he said. ``We didn't have anything to break.''

Snow, who came to work to assist with calls about the quake, said the department had logged at least 60 calls by 9:30 p.m., not counting people who dialed the 911 emergency number.

"It did go through the dispatch center here," said Chris Hennis, a dispatcher at the Grayson County Sheriff's Office. "It was just a light shake. ... Some people felt it harder and stronger, [but] nobody's reported a single thing hurt, damaged or anything."

In Ashe County, N.C., the Sheriff's Department had received about 250 calls about the quake by 9:30 p.m. In Alleghany County, more than 100 people had called the Sheriff's Department, authorities said. There were no reports of damage in either county.

Chapman said quakes this size are not unusual in this part of the country. He said two others have been recorded in the same general area since 1977. But he figures there's probably one of this magnitude in the Virginia-North Carolina-Tennessee area about every six months to a year.

In Atkins, on the Smyth County side of the border, people were not sure they felt anything. D.C. Lockhart said he felt "just kind of a rumble. ... I thought it was traffic or something."

Staff Writer Paul Dellinger and The Associated Press contributed information to this story.

by CNB