Image from WUSA
Image from WUSA
Image from WUSA
WASHINGTON -- The National Park Service says most of the monuments and memorials on the National Mall have reopened after being closed following the East Coast earthquake.
That excludes the Washington Monument that will be closed indefinitely after engineers found cracks near the top.
The park service says all monuments and memorials were initially evacuated and closed, including the new Martin Luther King Jr. memorial.
But the King memorial and several others that don't include large buildings were reopened within an hour of the 5.8-magnitude earthquake, which struck at 1:51 p.m. The U.S. Geological Survey reports the earthquake hit 87 miles away from DC, near Mineral, Va.
Our sister station WUSA in Washington, DC, reported that the USGS has indicated the earthquake may have been a foreshock, and more may be coming.
Savannah officials say a city office building was evacuated after employees felt the building shaking and swaying at about the same time a 5.8-magnitude earthquake shook the Washington, D.C. area.
Residents of Atlanta's suburbs and other parts of Georgia also said they felt the earthquake Tuesday. More than two dozen people in Georgia reported feeling tremors to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Bret Bell, a spokesman for the City of Savannah, says city workers evacuated a five-story office building next to City Hall around 2 p.m. He says employees said they felt the building swaying. Inspectors found no structural damage.
Brent Neill, a software designer in the Atlanta suburb of Duluth, said he felt his two-story office building shudder Tuesday. He says some people saw doors shaking on their hinges.
Our Facebook page indicates people as far away as Philadelphia, Charlotte and Toronto felt the earth move.
In July 2010, an earthquake rattled the same region. Here is the ABC News report from that incident with more background related to today's quake:
The relatively small magnitude 3.6 quake originated at 5:04 a.m., about 15 miles away in Rockville, Md. It was the largest quake to strike within 30 miles of the White House, at least since 1974, when the U.S. Geological Survey began tracking D.C. quake activity, according to spokeswoman Amy Vaughn.
ABC News correspondent John Donvan, who lives a mile from the White House, said the quake rattled windows at his home as well.
"I know it's not a cataclysm, but it is a record-setter for D.C.," Donvan said on "Good Morning America" today. "This is not an earthquake zone."
"The first thing that happened, windows just started rattling a real loud rattle and then the floor," Deborah Paige of Stafford, Va., told ABC News' local affiliate WJLA. "I could feel the vibrations on my floor. I live fairly close to Quantico and when they're rehearsing their war games or whatever we can feel their effects. ... It was kind of scary not knowing what it was."
The police station in nearby Montgomery County was swamped with phone calls from mystified residents, according to a report by The Associated Press.
But Michio Kaku, a professor of physics at the City University of New York, told "GMA" that people really shouldn't be so surprised. "The Northeast is riddled with tiny micro-faults; we forget that," he said. "We think that the ground on our earth is stable. It's not."
Donvan's dog may have known something was up five minutes before the quake struck, he said.
"The dog went nuts ... wimpering and complaining," he said. "He went to the door, but then he wouldn't move. Maybe he knew it was coming."
MORE: Arlington, Va., Evacuations
Associated Press, ABC News