Earthquake Shakes Up Bethlehem

The 5.8 magnitude that emanated from Virginia to rattle the whole Northeast literally and figuratively shook up some people in Bethlehem and across the Lehigh Valley.

But at the end of it all, it seemed to be nothing more than a brief distraction. No one was hurt, there seemed to be no damage and a lot of people had a new story to tell.

City Hall was briefly evacuated. So were campus buildings at and , as well as .

Over in Allentown, the Lehigh County Government Center on Seventh Street was evacuated as were many other downtown buildings, according to Tom Muller, the county’s director of administration.

The high-rise office tower at One Bethlehem Plaza at 1 W. Broad Street shook and many of its tenants were frightened by the experience, but there was no evacuation there, according to Joseph Hoffmaier, chairman of the Bethlehem Parking Authority, who works in the building.

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation announced that it began an immediate program of bridge inspections around the state, focusing first on spans that are at least 200 feet long and 60 feet high.

“We have no reason to believe the Virginia earthquake caused major damage to any state roadways or bridges,” said Scott Christie, PennDOT’s Deputy Secretary for Highway Administration. “But to err on the side of caution, we are assessing those bridges that could be susceptible to quake damage.”

Back at , there were reports of desks sliding on the building’s upper floors.

“I never felt anything like that,” said Nanette Snyder, the assistant city clerk, expressing a sentiment that could be heard across the city and the Valley.

“I heard things falling down above me, in the ceiling,” she said. “I didn’t like that. I never want to feel anything like that again.”

Sherry Flanagan, a receptionist and secretary in the mayor’s office on the second floor, said when she first felt the tremor, she thought she was getting ill.

“When I stood up, I realized it wasn’t me,” she said. Soon after, she said, the alarm sounded and the building was evacuated. “There were a lot of pale, white faces,” she said.

One employee remarked: “I never saw City Hall evacuated that quickly.”

More than an hour later, and everyone back at their desks, the initial fear had faded, but the earthquake still left the corridors in a buzz.

“Did you feel it?” people could be heard asking each other.

When Colonial Hall began to shake at Moravian College, Michael P. Wilson’s first thoughts were of the sturdiness of the 18th Century walls around him. Neither he nor most of the other college employees waited for campus security to tell them to evacuate, he said.

“It was a very strange and eerie feeling,” said Wilson, the director of public relations and marketing for the college. “We evacuated pretty quickly.” It only took a half-hour to get clearance to return, he said.

On the plus side for Moravian, its three-year-old seismometers maintained in the college’s computer science department got a workout.

“These devices are sensitive enough to detect events on the other side of the world, and so today's event generated an immense seismograph,” said Ben Coleman, assistant professor of computer science at the college. “It was so large that it maxed out the device.”

For the past three years, the computer science department has worked with the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology, a multi-university consortium, to develop software to help students learn about earthquakes and seismology.