
DATE: Tuesday, June 10, 1997                TAG: 9706100225

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY CINDY CLAYTON  AND JACK DORSEY, STAFF WRITERS 

                                            LENGTH:   81 lines

MYSTERIOUS BOOM, TREMORS RATTLE FOLKS ALL OVER AREA

It was the boom heard and felt - around Hampton Roads.

At least one loud boom, accompanied in some instances by tremors, caused concern but apparently no harm late Monday morning as residents from Norfolk to Suffolk flooded 911 centers with dozens of calls.

A woman in Suffolk wanted to know what caused her cabinets to fly open. A firefighter in Suffolk's Holland area reported seeing an aluminum silo shaking. Some callers said their glassware had shattered.

A Navy worker in Norfolk said she was startled when her chair began to shake for no reason. A woman in Virginia Beach's Great Neck area said her house shook several times.

Dr. James Coble, associate professor of geology at Tidewater Community College, said the cause of the trembling probably was not an earthquake.

``I looked at our seismograph here, and we have picked up something,'' he said. He said the cause was probably not a ``natural'' event. ``It doesn't look like a tremor.''

Coble said the readings picked up on the machine could have been caused by a sonic boom, heavy construction work or military testing.

Neither Air Force nor Navy officials had an explanation for the noises.

Although some police departments and television and radio stations told folks initially that the Air Force in Hampton was responsible, officials at Langley denied that.

A spokeswoman at Langley Air Force Base acknowledged minor explosions were set off by munitions experts simulating a wartime exercise Monday morning, but they didn't coincide with the times people reported hearing the booms.

The explosives were part of a test exercise and were detonated on a golf course, said Lt. Patricia Lang, a Langley spokeswoman. They have a maximum audio range of 200 feet, she said.

Those explosions occurred between 10:30 and 10:45 a.m. Most callers to police and news agencies indicated the noises were heard between 11:15 and 11:40 a.m.

``We believe the incidents are unrelated,'' Lang said.

Coble said that, given the right timing and conditions, the shock wave from a ground blast could be felt as far away as Suffolk.

But the blast would be felt within a minute after the charge was set off. Dispatchers and media agencies reported receiving calls about 45 minutes after Langley officials said the blasts occurred.

Shirley Mebane, who lives in a log home in Suffolk, said she heard two loud rumbles and thought her house was falling in.

``My cabinet door flew open, and my storm door came open,'' she said. ``It was more than a sonic boom. I've never been in an earthquake, but I lived in Florida and heard those satellites go up. It was similar.''

Mebane said she called her sister in Virginia Beach, who lives along Indian River Road at the Chesapeake line, and she reported hearing a loud noise about the same time. Her son, who lives on U.S. Route 17 in Suffolk, also heard the noise, she said.

An employee at the Norfolk Naval Station said at about 11:40 a.m., a noise rattled her office door.

``I thought someone was knocking on my door, so I told them to come in,'' she said. ``Then I felt my chair shaking.''

Cmdr. Mike Andrews, a spokesman for the Norfolk Naval Base complex, said he was walking toward his office when he heard the noise.

``Sounded to me like something was dropping, like one of those Dumpsters they always drop on the pavement in midmorning,'' he said.

Andrews said no unusual Navy activity was reported by either ship or air units.

An unexplained seismic phenomenon occurred in Hampton Roads almost a year ago July. Experts never could explain several tremors that rocked the area, causing windows and doors to shake.

Two years ago, residents across the region were shaken by tremors caused by Navy testing several miles off Virginia Beach. MEMO: Staff writer Susie Stoughton contributed to this story. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic

WAS IT AN EARTHQUAKE? An associate professor of geology at

Tidewater Community College said readings picked up by a seismograph

show that the cause probably was not an earthquake.

WAS IT MILITARY TESTING? Air Force and Navy officials did not have

an explanation for the noise. A Langley Air Force Base spokeswoman

says test explosives were detonated Monday morning, but the blasts

occurred at least 30 minutes earlier than the times reported by

callers to 911.