Washington Monument closed indefinitely after 5.8 earthquake hits east coast
Terrifying tremors were felt in New York, Washington D.C. and as far north as Toronto on Tuesday when America's East Coast was struck by the biggest earthquake in over a century.
Major buildings, including the Pentagon and the White House had to be evacuated and several top tourist attractions in Washington have been closed for safety reasons after the city was shaken by a 5.8-magnitude quake, which originated in Virginia.
Flights from JFK in New York and Reagan National Airport in Washington were also suspended while the airports checked for runway damage, but were later resumed.
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Shocked: Office workers gather on the sidewalk in downtown Washington
Thankful: Co-workers Susan Sproul, left, and Susan Davidson hug after evacuating from their building after an earthquake was felt in Baltimore
Bad timing: A bride in her wedding dress runs from the courthouse in Lower Manhattan in New York after feel! ing the terrifying shake
The tremor was felt as far south as Anderson in South Carolina and, to the north, Martha's Vineyard, the popular holiday spot where the President Barack Obama is currently staying with his family, was also affected.
According to reports, he had just been starting a round of golf when the floor moved underneath him.
Buildings in Virginia suffered extensive damage and in Washington the National Cathedral lost one of its spires.
There are also reports of cracks appearing in the iconic Washington Monument - the world's tallest obelisk - following the tremor. As a result of 'structural complexities' it has been closed indefinitely, while the Lincoln Memorial, Jefferson Memorial and the Old Post Office Tower are all temporarily closed as a precaution while safety checks are carried out.
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Trains were temporarily suspended due to the quake and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg confirmed the suspension bridges in the city were checked for damage.
The 5.9-magnitude tremor struck at about 2pm local time with shallow tremors of about 3.7 miles deep, which is thought to explain why the shaking was so widespread.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake was half a mile deep and centred near Louisa, Virginia,! about 4 0 miles north west of Richmond.
Crushed: Cars were smashed in Virginia after the huge East Coast earthquake
Wreckage: Pictures show the devastating aftermath of the quake in Virginia
Fallen bricks: A man walks past bricks that fell off of a house in Baltimore
'Clean up on aisle five': Debris covers the aisle floor at the Miller's mart food store in Mineral, Virginia
It is though to have been the strongest quake to hit the Virginia area since 1897.
The previous record for an earthquake in the Washington, D.C. area was on July 16, 2010, when a 3.6 magnitude struck.
'Thisis one of the largest earthquakes on the east coast in quite a while, in many decades at least,' USGS spokeswoman Lucy Jones told CNN.
Recovery mission: Christopher Hartman works on the roof installing a tarpaulin after the earthquake tore down parts of the chimney on his dad's office in Mineral, Virginia
Out of order: A gas pump in Mineral, Virginia, is cordoned off and out of service after being damaged by the earthquake
Dangerous: One of the spires , left, of the National Cathedral in Washington is seen missing following the earthquake
Damaged: The spire, left, was smashed by the quake, leaving debris, right, on the floor
Barricaded: US Capitol Police officers secure the streets outside the US Capitol in Washington, D.C.
Precautions: Staff ran from the Pentagon after the earthquake, thinking it was an attack
Open space: Workers stand in Foley Square park in New York after the earthquake
The Capitol Building and the Pentagon were among buildings evacuated after the quake struck.
Pictures hanging on the walls at the Capitol reportedly fell to the floor from the shocks.
Impact: The earthquake could be felt across the East Coast of America
'We're getting a lot of calls on buildings shaking but there's no report of any structural damage at this time,' a spokesman for the New York City Fire Department said.
Buildings in Boston were evacuated, while witnesses said the quake was felt as far away as Toronto.
In New York, many office buildings were evacuated.
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly was in the NYPD's 14th floor executive command centre planning a 9-11 memorial service.
'We felt a rumbling and the floor shaking underneath,' said his spokesman, Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne.
Mary Lupoli, 64, a supervisor in the NYPD's public inquiry office at 1 Police Plaza, said she thought the worst when the evacuation order came.
'I kind of thought it could be a terrorist attack. It's THAT time,' she said.
The 26-story federal courthouse in lower Manhattan bega! n swayin g and hundreds of people fled into the street.
When Ellen Rea felt the tremors in her New York she panicked and thought of 10 years ago.
'Im not a person who gets scared, but I thought of 9/11 and thought what the hell happened? she told CNN
She remembered being near the World Trade Center nearly 10 years ago and coming home with ash in her hair.
'It actually surprised me how those thoughts came up,' she said. 'Im a tough New Yorker. I was really surprised that was the first thought.'
Charlene Lloyd, 25, who works on the 60th floor of the Empire State Building, told the New York Daily News: 'It felt like I was in a boat. I was on the phone with a client, and I hung up and ran.'
Bill Parks, from Hummelstown, added: 'Our townhouse started shaking a short time ago and branches started to fall off trees and hit our windows and hit our roof like crazy.'
Ripples: This map shows the vast spread of the affect of the earthquake. Buildings were evacuated as far away as Toronto, Canada
Shaken: Live pictures from Washington and New York, which felt the shudder
'It lasted about 10 seconds and was asbad as the Northridge after shock I had experienced while visiting in California. I ran outdoors and found my neighbour calling a friend in Virginia who also felt the profound quake. This quake was like none I ever experienced in the East in my life and I am 76 years old.'
The ! city sai d calls to 911 spiked to 6,900 in the half hour between 1.30 pm and 2.00pm, most placed in the final 10 minutes. Normally, 911 receives 800 calls in a half hour.
ThomasMcGarry, 55, has run a small convenience store kiosk above subway tracks right in front of New York city hall for the last year and a half.
He told MailOnline he was in the kiosk when the quake hit.
'We all looked at each other. I thought the floor was going to cave in,' he said.
Calling home: Office workers gather on a sidewalk after their building was evacuated following an earthquake in New York
Damage: A maintenance worker looks for additional cracked windows in a building on Market Street in Philadelphia
He added that it wasn't long before workers at the government buildings on Broadway poured into the street.
'They were flooding out, like on 9/11. We couldn't even get out of the shop to look because we were surrounded.'
FloraGross, also 55, was working on the fourth floor of a federal office building on church street, just down the street from ground zero, when she felt the tremors.
Calm: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg speaks after the earthquake
Just in case: Children are evacuated from the Jacob K. Javits Federal building in New York
Scared: Suzanne Beatty comforts her son Quentin Beatty, 7, on a street in TriBeCa, New York
'We thought it was construction,' she said. 'But then my daughter called from uptown and said: 'Mummy we just had an earthquake.'
Her husband, who works as a maintenance worker uptown, told her he was on a ladder when the quake hit. 'He thought his legs were giving out before realising the whole building was shaking,' she said.
When Alex Priest, a director of a marketing company, felt the tremors on his 7thfloor office in Bethesda, Maryland, he suspected a terrorist attack. He told CNN he and his co-workers sprinted out of the building.
'I was young when the attacks happened,' said Mr Priest, 22, about 9/11. 'For the vast majority of my formative years, weve just had thisnational security mindset. There are terrorists out there.'
'Just being in that environment and having that as a constant issue in the news and because of the 9/11 anniversary, the first thing that comes into your mind any time something bad happens is "Oh my God, is it terrorist attack?"'
Aghast: Pe! ople who came out on the street after an earthquake look up at a window that cracked during the quake on Market Street in Philadelphia
Gathered: People gather for safety in a garden in Lower Manhattan after the earthquake in Virginia was felt in New York
Paul Badger said he was sitting in his office in Troutman, North Carolina, when the earthquake hit.
'Icould feel my chair slowly rocking back and forth and see my computer monitors rocking slightly,' he told the Charlotte Observer.
Another resident told the newspaper that dishes and plates in his house shook.
Control towers at John F. Kennedy and Newark Liberty International airports were also evacuated.
Andre Smith-Pugh, 25, felt the shaking from the top of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
'It felt like the scaffolding was coming down,' he told the New York Times. 'It felt like a big truck slammed into the side of the building right here at the White House.'
In Mineral, Virginia, which is four miles from the quakes centre, residents said there had been extensive damage, with pictures falling off walls and crockery smashing from shelves.
Wrecked: Damage can be seen on the street outside a library in Washington DC
Sha ttered: Part of the library's roof crumbled during the 5.9 magnitude earthquake
Broken: Cracks appear on the facade of a building on Market Street in downtown Philadelphia
In Charleston, West Virginia, hundredsof workers left the state Capitol building and employees at other downtown office buildings were asked to leave.
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.
In Connecticut, play was stopped during a tennis match at the New Haven Open after the stadium on the Yale campus shook.
The umpire stopped the game between Jelena Jankovic of Serbia and Elena Vesnina of Russia after spectators felt three waves of shaking and water bottles sloshed back and forth.
According to reports, tremors were felt as far away as Toronto, Canada.
On King Street West in Toronto, office workers evacuated buildings. One, named Amanda, told the Toronto News her whole office rolled.
'It was very unnerving,' she said. 'I have no words.'
Social networking siteTwitter lit up with reports of the earthquake from people using the site up and down the U.S. eastern seaboard.
People pouring out of buildings and onto the sidewalks and Into Farragut Park in downtown DC..., tweeted Republican strategist Kevin Madden.
Missouri senator Claire McCaskill tweeted that her staff in Washington was in an emergency location. Hope everyone is OK.
Blower: President Obama was busy on the golf course when he heard the news
On holiday: President Barack Obama, second from left, felt the quake while playing golf
Hard at play: President Barack Obama plays the first hole of the Farm Neck Golf Club today
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.
Not everyone, however, was quite so terrified by the tremors. On Wall Street traders could be heard shouting: 'Carry ontrading!' despite the shaking.
No injuries were immediately reported.
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