NJ Native Experiences Virginia Earthquake Firsthand

After  Virginia this afternoon, one former New Jersey resident now living in Virginia, who said he felt his whole house shake for nearly 10 minutes, is still finding it hard to concentrate.

"I feel on edge right now," said Pete Curry, who is studying piano at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, about 30 miles from the quake epicenter. "I am feeling hypersensitive to low frequencies. I can feel it when trucks go by on Broad Street, a couple blocks away."

Curry is a transplant from Palmyra, NJ, a municipality located in Burlington County. In addition to his university studies, Curry works as an accompanist and assistant director for the Greater Richmond Children's choir, was sitting in his bedroom in Richmond around 2 pm writing music when he and his roommate, who had just walked into the room, felt a rumble.

"For a second, it felt like a train was rolling behind the house or something," Curry, 28, said, "except the whole house was shaking. You could see it in the windows and feel it in the floor."

Curry and his roommate ran out of the house to find everybody on their block exiting their homes, too. Curry watched his house shake for about 10 more minutes.

"It could have been five minutes that seemed like 10," Curry said, "or it could have been 20 that seemed like 10."

There's no damage to Curry's home but he said cell phone towers are down. Because of that, there are several people he hasn't been able to get in touch with yet.

"I have some friends hiking out in Virginia, west of here somewhere, that I hope are OK," Curry said.

Television and news reports in Virginia are telling residents to expect aftershocks, Curry said. A poster in Curry's dining room was crooked after the earthquake and several items in his bedroom were shifted, he said. 

"Damage assessments are slowly trickling in through the news down here," Curry said. "A nuclear plant northwest of here went into emergency mode, but is reported in safe condition."

The tremor was felt all up and down the East Coast. Officials from the New Jersey Office of Emergency Management said there have been very few reports of damage to any infrastructure in the state.