US earthquake leads to evacuation of White House

No reports of deaths but from Manhattan to Washington DC, aeroplanes were grounded and offices evacuated

As natural disasters go, it was hardly a catastrophe, but the earthquake felt across parts of America on Tuesday certainly had an impact. As buildings swayed from Manhattan to Detroit to Washington DC, aeroplanes were grounded and offices evacuated.

The earthquake was one of the strongest ever recorded on the east coast of the US and forced the evacuations of parts of the Capitol, White House and Pentagon.

There were no immediate reports of deaths, but fire officials in Washington said there were some injuries.

The US Geological Survey said the quake registered magnitude 5.8 and was centred about 40 miles north-west of Richmond, Virginia.

Two nuclear reactors at the North Anna power station were taken off line. Around the tiny town of Mineral, Virginia, masonry crumbled. In Washington DC, thousands poured into the streets as offices, including in the Pentagon and the Capitol, were evacuated. The Holland tunnel under the Hudson River, which links New York and New Jersey, was closed, promising delays. Manhattan’s forest of skyscrapers could be felt gently shifting from side to side.

A press conference by the Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance, who was set to address the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case, was evacuated as it began. Pictures of panicked journalists fleeing the room were carried live. Mobile phone networks in New York and Washington DC also partially stopped working.

As in the real world, on Twitter fear soon gave way to humour. Some cracked jokes about the possible entry of the portly New Jersey governor into the 2012 presidential election contest. “I think Chris Christie just jumped into the race,” tweeted Salon political blogger Alex Pareene. It also prompted a wave of mocking humour from people on America’s west coast, where moderate quakes are common. “The entire west coast is laughing at us right now,” tweeted Lisa Hoffman, a social media specialist in North Carolina.

The quake’s biggest impact was perhaps to show that news is often about where something happens, and to whom. On Monday night, a quake struck in Colorado, far from any cities. It registered as a 5.3 and was the largest to hit the state in over a century, but barely merited a headline. Or, indeed, a tweet.