At the epicenter of last week’s magnitude 5.8 earthquake centered in Mineral, Va., was the Louisa County School District, which literally rolled with the punches during the uncharacteristic tremor felt from Florida to Canada.
The quake struck at 1:51 p.m. local time as the district’s mechanics were servicing school buses and other vehicles. Lead mechanic Donnie Thomas was sitting at his desk inside the garage doing paperwork when he heard a loud noise and the building began shaking, he told School Transportation News. His first thought was, “Earthquake!” Then, as the walls began to crumble, Thomas yelled, “We’ve got to get out of here!”
He and the other mechanics scrambled for the door.
“It seemed like the earthquake just picked the building up and shook it, because the floor and everything else was vibrating,” he added
Thomas said that, had the earthquake lasted 20 or 25 seconds instead of the estimated 15 seconds, he was positive the building would have come down, similar to other buildings in the community. The district and the surrounding area lost electricity and telephone services, and the school bus two-way radios went down for short period of time. But, Thomas added, communications were soon restored and the school buses were deployed to evacuate students and take them home.
The cooperation of students, teachers, drivers, law enforcement, the districts school resource officers and parents helped ease any additional challenges. Still, the damage was extensive. Thomas said Louisa County High School was so badly damaged that it is uninhabitable for the remainder of the school year, as was Thomas Jefferson Elementary. Luckily, no students were injured. Thomas added that the district performed a well-coordinated evacuation of studetns.
Earthquakes along the Atlantic seaboard are rarer than along the West coast of the United States, because Virgina and its neighbors are located far from the edge of the North American Plate, according to the the U.S. Geological Survey. In contrast, California is located at the western-most edge of North American Plate, also known as the San Andreas Fault. But, obviously, Virginia has fault lines of its own faults, just not on the edge of a tectonic plate.
