Rare East Coast quakes rattle large areas

WASHINGTON (AP) - The East Coast doesn’t get earthquakes often but when they do strike, there’s a whole lot more shaking going on.

The ground in the East is older, colder and more intact than the West Coast. So when one of those rare quakes strike, they rattle an area up to 10 times larger than a similar-sized West Coast temblor.

Tuesday’s 5.8 quake in Virginia was centered 40 miles northwest of Richmond. There hasn’t been a quake that large on the East Coast since 1944 in New York.

This earthquake was on an unknown fault. And seismologists say the fault isn’t likely to be pinpointed because the surface never ruptured.

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