Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Still Worried About The Epicenter Area

I'm worried about the area near the epicenter of this East Coast quake. The strength of this shallow quake is on a par with the similarly-shallow quakes near Christchurch, NZ, which did terrible damage. Some towns in VA got hammered, I'm sure!

No news of any Virginia calamities yet. The Washington Post has coverage:
Any assumption that the region is seismically serene was corrected at 1:51 p.m. when a fault near the small town of Mineral, Va., suddenly ruptured.

...The first warnings of the earthquake may have occurred at the National Zoo, where officials said some animals seemed to feel it coming before people did. The red ruffed lemurs began “alarm calling” a full 15 minutes before the quake hit, zoo spokeswoman Pamela Baker-Masson said. In the Great Ape House, Iris, an orangutan, let out a guttural holler 10 seconds before keepers felt the quake. The flamingos huddled together in the water seconds before people felt the rumbling. The rheas got excited. And the hooded mergansers — a kind of duck — dashed for the safety of the water.

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