More Mini-Quakes in VA

Is this becoming the new normal?

Two more aftershocks gently shook the region last night, and a third happened Tuesday morning.

At 7:40 p.m. Monday, a 2.2 aftershock was recorded, and then at 11:48 p.m., a 2.6 magnitude aftershock happened.  At 9:26 a.m., a 2.1 rumble registered.

This follows a series of tremblors that rumbled overnight Sunday, pushing the number of aftershocks into the double digits.

Virginia's rocks got a lot more active last week when movement in state's center caused a 5.8 magnitude quake that damaged D.C. landmarks and was felt up and down the East Coast.

"That's what we'd expect to see. We'd expect to see a lot more tiny ones," Paul Caruso, a U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist told the Times-Dispatch Monday. "We would expect the majority of them to be in that range."

Caruso told the Dispatch it’s impossible to tell how long the aftershocks will last, but based on the historical record, the larger the quake, a longer period of aftershocks usually follows.

The 5.8 magnitude quake that centered in Mineral last week was the strongest to be felt in Virginia in over a century.  The biggest Virginia quake was felt in Giles County, Virginia in 1897, when a magnitude 5.9 quake was recorded.

At the epicenter in Louisa County, officials say it could cost up to $60 million to replace a high school and an elementary school damaged by last week's earthquake.

Officials told a joint meeting of the School Board and county Board of Supervisors on Monday that it's unclear whether Louisa County High School and Thomas Jefferson Elementary School can be repaired or if they'll need to be replaced. The two schools won't reopen for the rest of the school year, and their students are attending schools in other buildings and classrooms.
 

Copyright AP - Associated Press
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