East Coast quake shakes Pelham, and people from Maine to Virginia

By Tess Darrow

Did you feel the East Coast earthquake on Aug. 23? It measured 5.8 on the Richter scale, and people felt the earth shake from Georgia to Maine. The last time a quake on the East Coast measured a magnitude of 5.8 was in 1944. I was on my way to the dentist when the quake struck. We didn’t feel it, probably because we were in our car. My dentist, Dr. Kavita Kohli, said, “When I was examining my patient’s teeth, she thought I was adjusting the chair, but I wasn’t. It was the earthquake!”

Myrna Jacobs, who lives in Burke, Virginia, about 100 miles from the center of the quake, was at work in her office building. “It felt like the whole building had little tremors,” she said. “Then it felt like 100 helicopters landed on the roof of our office building. The building started swaying back and forth. People yelled for everyone to get under their desk. The building was shaking and it was very scary.”

She said that some pictures fell off the wall and some of her pottery was broken.

The earthquake lasted for about 40 seconds. At 1 a.m. on Aug. 25, there were aftershocks in Virginia.

This story was originally published on the Colonial Times website.