BREAKING NEWS: Earthquake rocks entire East Coast, aftershocks likely

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- A 5.9 magnitude earthquake centered northwest of Richmond, Va., shook Charleston on Tuesday afternoon.
The movement was also felt in much of Washington, D.C., and as far north as Rhode Island, New York City and Martha's Vineyard, Mass., where President Barack Obama is vacationing.
In West Virginia's capital, hundreds of workers left the state Capitol building and employees at other downtown office buildings were asked to leave temporarily.
"The whole building shook," said Jennifer Bundy, a spokeswoman for the state Supreme Court. "You could feel two different shakes. Everybody just kind of came out on their own."
Hugh Bevins, district chief of the U.S. Geological Survey's Water Science Center, said it felt as if his office on Dunbar Street in Charleston was swaying. Bevins, who lived in Nevada for a number of years, knew immediately it was an earthquake.
"It was kind of exciting," he said. "It was a pretty good sized earthquake if we felt it here, too."

Bevins said he had spoken with colleagues at the USGS office in Richmond, Va., who said their building shook violently. They were concerned the roof would collapse.

He said he'd never felt anything like Tuesday's incident in his 12 years in West Virginia, but another co-worker recalled a similar incident some 40 years ago.

Bevins said he has been hearing from friends and relatives who felt it, and others who didn't. Bevins' wife did not feel the quake and neither did his friend in Elkview.

"River valleys tend to shake a lot more," he said. "The saturated ground tends to shake more and kind of amplifies the waves that come through."

Several buildings in the Kanawha Valley were temporarily evacuated including those at West Virginia State University in Institute and downtown office towers in Charleston. The Kanawha County Courthouse and Judicial Annex were evacuated along with Charleston City Hall.

Kanawha Metro 911 received hundreds of calls in the minutes following the quake from residents reporting what they felt. Emergency officials weren't aware of any injuries or property damage related to the event, according to a statement issued by Metro Communications.

Dispatchers advised residents to leave their buildings if they felt the structures were insecure.

John Gurlach, air traffic controller at the Morgantown Municipal Airport was in a 40-foot-tall tower when the earth trembled.

"There were two of us looking at each other saying, 'What's that?'" he said, even as a commuter plane was landing. "It was noticeably shaking. It felt like a B-52 unloading."