Quake shakes District of Columbia, felt along East Coast

A 5.9-magnitude earthquake centered in Virginia forced evacuations of all the memorials and monuments on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., and rattled nerves from South Carolina to Martha’s Vineyard, the Massachusetts island where President Barack Obama is vacationing. A District of Columbia Fire Department spokesman says there are numerous injuries, but no reports of serious injuries or deaths. The U.S. Geological Survey says the earthquake was half a mile deep and centered near Louisa, Va., about 40 miles northwest of Richmond. Shaking was felt at the White House and all over the East Coast, as far south as Charleston, S.C. Parts of the Pentagon, White House and Capitol were evacuated. Two nuclear reactors at the North Anna Power Station in the same county as the epicenter were automatically taken off line by safety systems around the time of the earthquake, says Roger Hannah, a spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. More than 12 million people live close enough to the quake’s epicenter to have felt shaking, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The agency says this quake was in the yellow alert category for economic damage, meaning there was potential for local damage but that it would add up to far less than 1% of the country’s gross domestic product.