Va. earthquake shakes Boston area; no damage reported

By John R. Ellement and Martin Finucane, Globe Staff

An earthquake centered in Virginia shook the Eastern Seaboard just before 2 p.m., and was felt as a rumble lasting several seconds in the Boston area. Some buildings in the area were evacuated, while officials inspected them, but there were no immediate reports of serious damage.

The US Geological Survey said the earthquake measured 5.8 on the Richter scale and was centered 83 miles southwest of Washington, D.C.

“There are no reports of any damage. We felt it obviously, but it was in Virginia,” said Dot Joyce, a spokeswoman for Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino. She said the mayor had been on the phone continuously with the city’s police commissioner, fire commissioner, and director of emergency management.

Firefighters raced to 111 Devonshire St. in the downtown area to investigate reports that the building had started to lean after the tremor. But Deputy Fire Chief Richard DiBenedetto said that, according to the building manager and city inspectors, the building always looked that way.

“We have no reports of damage in the city,’’ fire department spokesman Steve MacDonald said at 2:30 p.m. “We have found that people felt it and evacuated buildings on their own.” Boston police said they received a rash of calls but no reports of damage or injury.

David Procopio, spokesman for the Massachusetts State Police, said the tremor was felt at the agency headquarters in Framingham. He said more than 40 phone calls were received by dispatchers shortly afterwards.

“No one was reporting any significant damage,’’ Procopio said. “They were just asking what’s going on and if there is there is anything they should do.’’

Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency spokesman Peter Judge said there were no reports of damage or injury statewide. He said the agency had reached out to the state’s nuclear plants and they “reported no issues.” Governor Deval Patrick continued his vacation in Richmond today, but aides said MEMA was in touch with local fire officials to assess the situation.

Hundreds of people walked out of US District Court in South Boston after having been ordered to evacuate.

Law clerks working on the eighth floor of the modern waterfront courthouse said they were stunned and confused by the quake.

Cassandra Barnum, 26, said she thought to herself that “Oh, my God, someone bombed the building.’’ Once she realized the building was not being attacked, Barnum said she was still unnerved. “I was nervous,’’ she said. “The building was swaying and everything was off balance.’’

At UMass-Boston, summer classes were cut short and all workers were sent home early after the tremors rattled nerves on the Dorchester campus.

“Many people left the buildings spontaneously,’’ said DeWayne Lehman, UMass Boston spokesman.

He said people gathered on the school’s soccer fields while UMass Boston public safety officials made sure the buildings had been safely evacuated.

Lehman said the campus buildings, most of which were completed in 1974 and are built on reclaimed land, are being inspected by facility managers as a precaution.

He said the school expects to reopen Wednesday.

Staff were evacuated at Bay State College in the Back Bay briefly while the Commonwealth Avenue building was checked. A medical building on Beacon Street in Brookline was evacuated while it was being inspected. A Boston Ballet building in the South End was also evacuated.

A spokeswoman for Boston Properties, owner of the Hancock and Prudential towers, said residents felt the quake in the buildings, but no one was evacuated and there were no immediate signs of damage.

Donna Cutillo, assistant to the chief executive of Partners Health Care, who works on the 11th floor of the Prudential Center, said the building was “swaying so much that everyone came out of their office or out of their meeting – everyone felt it at the same time.”

She said it lasted no more than 10 seconds “but you could definitely feel it.”

“I wasn’t afraid. I just didn’t know what was going on at first,” she said.

“Considering that we’re one of the tallest buildings in the city, I’m surprised” no one was evacuated, she said.

At the State House, the quake shook House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo, who was seated with two aides at a table in his ornate third-floor office.

“I’m sitting there and I said, ‘Is there something wrong with me? I feel like I’m shaking, or the ground is shaking,’” DeLeo recalled about an hour later.

“I said, ‘Did you guys feel that?’” But DeLeo said he was the only one in the room to feel the tremor, so he dispatched one of his aides to find out if a construction project outside his office was to blame for the tremor.

“This goes to the crux of leadership,” he chuckled. “I’m proud to say that, in this office, I’m a little more perceptive.”

The quake could be felt at the Globe offices in Dorchester and at Boston City Hall. At the Verizon building in the Financial District, spokesman Phil Santoro said, everyone felt the quake. “It felt like you were stepping onto a boat,” said Santoro.

The initial moments were made more worrisome by cellphone service disruptions. A flood of phone calls following the earthquake overburdened wireless networks in Massachusetts, causing many calls to fail, a spokesman for Sprint said.

“When you have a situation like the earthquake, there tends to be a number of people who all try to reach out using their phone at the same time,” said Mark Elliott in a brief telephone interview. “That amount of traffic causes an increase in blocked and dropped calls.”

AT&T Wireless also said in a tweet that they had experienced heavy call volumes. Michael Murphy, a spokesman for Verizon Wireless, said, “There was significant network volume for some customers in parts of the East for a short time after the tremors,” he said. “Everything returned to normal quickly once the tremors ended.”

The quake also caused flight disruptions along the East Coast. The Federal Aviation Administration temporarily grounded flights headed to New York City, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, New Jersey, and Virginia, and air traffic control towers were evacuated at Newark, Reagan National, Dulles, and John F. Kennedy airports, the Associated Press reported.

Logan International Airport had a “good shake,” said aviation director Edward Freni, and the tower rocked back and forth, but an inspection of roadways and facilities revealed no damage and operations continued.

Nine international flights headed to New York and Philadelphia were diverted to Boston, including a 500-passenger Emirates A380 flying from Dubai to JFK. The A380, the biggest commercial airline in the sky, doesn’t normally fly into Logan, and the airport sent out several vehicles to guide it down the taxiway to the north cargo area, where it sat with passengers onboard while they waited for JFK to reopen.

There were some flight delays out of Logan due to ground stoppages at other airports -- “I would equate it to a snow storm,” Freni said -- and JetBlue Airways temporarily halted all its flights, posting a YouTube video of Carole King performing “I Feel the Earth Move” on Twitter in its announcement.

Speeds were reduced on Amtrak trains between Washington and Baltimore as crews inspected the tracks, delaying trains coming in to Boston.

On Martha’s Vineyard, where President Obama is vacationing, thequake was felt by reporters in the press entourage. The president had just started golfing at Farm Neck Golf Club in Oak Bluffs. The reporters inquired whether Obama felt the quake himself.

Massachusetts is located in a “moderate” earthquake zone. Although they cause only mild to insignificant damage, we experience several small tremors every year. Scientists cite the Cape Ann Earthquake of 1755 (with a magnitude of 6.0) as the last major earthquake to cause significant damage in Massachusetts.

Katie Johnston, Carolyn Johnson, Casey Ross, Glen Johnson, David Abel, Michael Levenson, and Andrew Ryan of the Globe staff, and correspondents Alexander Kaufman, Amanda Cedrone and Jaime Lutz contributed to this report.