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5.8 Virginia earthquake shakes East Coast, rattles residents
By Joel Achenbach, Published: The Washington Post, August 23, 2011
It was not a killer quake, nor even a particularly injurious one. But if it didn’t add up to a natural disaster, it was still a startling geological event, the strongest East Coast tremor in 67 years, and it effectively blew up the workday in Washington.
It was over in less than a minute. Workers surged out of office buildings, and cellphone networks quickly clogged. The Federal Emergency Management Agency eventually sent out a statement asking the public to switch to e-mail or text messages.
Capstones, known as finials, fell from three spires on Washington National Cathedral, and cracks appeared in the flying buttresses on the older east side. “Please pray for the Cathedral as there has been some damage,” the cathedral said in its official Twitter feed.
An inspection turned up cracks “at the very, very top” of the Washington Monument, said National Park Service spokesman Bill Line. The 555-foot-tall stone obelisk will remain closed and “could be closed for an indefinite period of time.”
More than 500 people were displaced in Prince George’s County as authorities condemned and evacuated two high-rise apartment buildings.
The Old Soldiers’ Home had structural damage, as did the Ecuadoran Embassy. The White House and the Capitol were evacuated, as were countless Washington area office buildings. Georgetown University, the Smithsonian museums and D.C. federal courts closed.
On Tuesday evening, federal and local officials were still scrutinizing some public buildings and trying to decide whether and when to reopen.
The first warnings of the earthquake may have occurred at the National Zoo, where officials said some animals seemed to feel it coming before people did. The red ruffed lemurs began “alarm calling” a full 15 minutes before the quake hit, zoo spokeswoman Pamela Baker-Masson said. In the Great Ape House, Iris, an orangutan, let out a guttural holler 10 seconds before keepers felt the quake. The flamingos huddled together in the water seconds before people felt the rumbling. The rheas got excited. And the hooded mergansers — a kind of duck — dashed for the safety of the water.
For people, it was a lovely, sparkling day for an emergency evacuation. Much of the capital’s workforce had gathered on sidewalks by 2 p.m. The federal government later urged agencies to send non-emergency workers home.
The two Dominion nuclear plants in North Anna, Va., 10 miles from the epicenter, shut down automatically when the quake hit. They lost power from the grid and switched to four diesel generators, according to a spokesman at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Bill Hall, spokesman for Dominion, said: “I’m in headquarters in Richmond, which is right next to a train track. I thought, ‘That train is going by awfully fast,’ and I looked and there was no train.”
Melvin Robinson Jr. of Fort Washington said he thought the earthquake was the latest gimmick from Hollywood. He was watching the new “Spy Kids” movie in 4-D at a theater on Route 1 in Alexandria with his children Camille, 11, and Melvin III, 10, when the room began shaking violently.
“We were watching the movie, and the chairs in the entire row began to shake left to right. We thought it was the special effects,” Robinson said. Someone then came on an intercom and told the moviegoers to evacuate.
The quake struck near the tail end of the second day of school for tens of thousands of Washington area students. A few minor injuries were reported in the District and Prince George’s. There was damage to some schools in both jurisdictions, as well as in Fairfax County, where the school year has not begun. Prince George’s officials announced late Tuesday that schools would be closed Wednesday to allow more time for inspections. Roosevelt and School Without Walls high schools in the District will be closed Wednesday because of damage.
Officials at the Columbia Heights Education Campus on 16th Street NW said students left the building in an orderly manner, mustering on the football field along with infants and toddlers who were wheeled in cribs from the school’s day-care center. But some students said the scene inside was panicky, with kids pushing on the staircases of the four-story building.
“It was a disaster,” said Diana Romero, a junior. “People were pushing and shoving, trying to get out. Some people were crying from the shock.”
Virginia officials were ramped up for a potential natural disaster, but they were thinking of Hurricane Irene, thousands of miles away. In Fairfax, the quake did not halt democracy: Board of Supervisors Chairman Sharon Bulova (D) vowed that a primary election would continue even if poll workers had to operate in the parking lots of closed buildings and use paper ballots.
In New York, Wall Street took a break as traders evacuated their buildings. The quake interrupted a prosecutor’s news conference about the dismissal of sexual assault charges against former International Monetary Fund head Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
“It was sort of a once-in-a-lifetime earthquake. A once-in-a-century earthquake,” Bailey said.
Geologists — including USGS scientists who evacuated to the parking lot outside their Reston headquarters — warned that aftershocks may strike for several days. Three small aftershocks were reported by Tuesday evening.
“Aftershocks could go on for days, weeks or even months,” said Mike Blanpied, associate coordinator of the USGS’s earthquake hazards program.
He said it is unlikely that the 5.8-magnitude quake was a foreshock of a stronger tremor because it was near the limit of what has been experienced in this region of Virginia. The last Virginia quake of this intensity was in 1897, a tremor felt as far south as Georgia and as far west as Indiana.
“In terms of energy release, a fairly run-of-the-mill earthquake,” USGS Director Marcia McNutt wrote in an e-mail, “but because the rocks along the East coast do such a superior job of transmitting seismic energy without dissipating it, the tremor was widely felt. “
McNutt — who watched her rock hammer leap from a shelf in her Reston office — offered advice on what to do the next time the ground shakes: “Duck, get under something sturdy like a desk or a doorway, get away from falling glass. Make sure that you are not in the way of falling objects like pictures, bookshelves, books, anything that’s not firmly connected the wall.”
Californians scoffed at Washington jitters. Relaxing on the fence wall in front of the White House, Monda Tajbakhsh, 54, and her friend, just off the red-eye from San Francisco, were amused by the capital’s reaction to “a tiny 5-point something!” Tajbakhsh said. “I found it really amusing. Wolf Whatever-his-name-is was on the television!”
A group of Montgomery College students did not evacuate from the financial aid office, spokeswoman Beth Homan said. Financial aid is key before classes start next week, and they didn’t want to lose their places in line.
The sun hadn’t even gone down on this unusual Washington day before someone had found a commercial angle. A General Motors dealership on Route 355 in Rockville began advertising “aftershock price reductions!”
Matisse's "The Plumed Hat" (1919), Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Gauguin Attacker Strikes Again, This Time Walloping a Matisse at D.C.’s National Gallery
Remember Susan Burns, the vigilante museumgoer who violently attacked a Gauguin painting at the National Gallery of Art? Well, she’s at it again. On Friday, Burns returned to the scene of her crime to take on the work of another modern master: Henri Matisse. Shortly before 1 p.m. on Friday, she entered the West Building of the National Gallery, approached the 1919 Impressionist portrait “The Plumed Hat,” and slammed its frame against the wall three times before being arrested on the scene.
The painting is valued at $2.5 million, according to court records posted on The Smoking Gun. While the antique frame, valued in excess of $250, sustained damage, the painting itself was unharmed, police said. The entire episode was captured on security camera videotape.
Burns, 53, of Alexandria, VA was arrested for felony destruction of government property, attempted theft, and unlawful entry. As a condition of her release following the April Gauguin attack, Burns signed a form acknowledging that she was barred for life from all museums and art galleries in Washington, hence the unlawful entry charges. After Friday’s episode, Burns was held at D.C. Superior Court, but was to be “transferred immediately” to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital (best known as the home of would-be presidential assassin John Hinckley, Jr.) “to be monitored closely,” according to a court docket cited by the Washington Post.
Burns is by no means the first to attack or publicly deface a work of art, but her status as a two-time offender makes her a rarity. Her frenzied attack in April appeared to be motivated by a fanatic puritanical rage, but it is unclear what provoked her to go after Matisse. Her earlier target, “Two Tahitian Women,” valued at $80 million, was on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of the exhibition “Gauguin: Maker of Myth.” It pictured a woman with one breast exposed alongside a fully bare-breasted companion.
After Burns attempted to rip the 1899 canvas from the wall, she began pounding its plexiglass box with her fists, shouting, “This is evil!” Following her arrest, she gave this angry diatribe against the French painter while standing, handcuffed, in the galleries: “He has nudity and is bad for the children. He has two women in the painting very homosexual. I was trying to remove it. I think it should be burned. I am from the American CIA and I have a radio in my head. I am going to kill you.”
Compared to the titillating subject matter of “Two Tahitian Women,” “The Plumed Hat” is quite staid. The painting depicts a brown-haired, fully-clothed woman in a gray headpiece rendered in broad brushstrokes. Admittedly, it’s not the most attractive hat in the world. (As the Washington City Paper pointed out, it’s slightly reminiscent of the gravity-defying monstrosity Princess Beatrice wore to the recent royal wedding.)
The work was part of the ongoing exhibition “From Impressionism to Modernism: The Chester Dale Collection,” an exhibition of 81 works from the late investment broker’s impressive holdings of late 19th- and early 20th-century French and American art. “The Plumed Hat” was Dale’s first major purchase of French modern art, according to the National Gallery’s Web site.
A spokesperson from the National Gallery, Deborah Ziska, declined to comment on the incident, or discuss whether any security changes were made following Burns’s outburst in April. “For reasons of maintaining security, we cannot discuss changes or other details about our security,” she told ARTINFO via e-mail.
Morton Fine Art (MFA) presents Late Empire Style, a solo exhibition of new paintings by artist Vonn Sumner. The exhibition will be on display at Morton Fine Art from September 16 through October 7, 2011. The opening reception will be held on September 16th from 6 to 8 pm with the artist in attendance.
Take a peek at this informative video on MFA artist Billy Colbert as he discusses the inspiration for his amazing mixed media works.
Morton Fine Art: curator's notes 