I was here in East Tennessee some 100 miles from Bristol, VA/TN, working in my home office on the second floor of our renovated 101-year-old brick, lathe, and plaster house, looking up occasionally to watch CNN's coverage of the Libyan rebels taking Gadhafi's compound in Tripoli, when I felt a very slight tremor lasting about 15 seconds. My first thought was that there had been another minor shift in the Eastern Tennessee Seismic Zone, which is subject to frequent small temblors. A few minutes later, CNN interrupted its Libyan coverage with news of the shallow quake having its epicenter in the area near Mineral, Virginia, measuring 5.8 on the Richter magnitude scale, and being felt all the way up the eastern seabord as far as New York City.
At the time the event occurred, my wife was on the bench in her courtroom at the Justice Center, a three-story brick and block building with concrete floors located about a mile from our home. When I picked her up at the end of the day, she had neither felt nor heard of the earthquake.
Thankfully, I have not heard of any casualties from the quake. My sympathy goes out to those who suffered property loss from the event.
