theYARDThe A&T Register | ncatregister.com | Wednesday, August 24, 2011 3

WASHINGTON — A 5.9 magnitude earthquake cen-tered northwest of Richmond, Va., shook much of Washing-ton, D.C., and was felt as far north as Rhode Island, New York City and Martha’s Vine-yard, Mass., where President Barack Obama is vacationing.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake was half a mile deep. Shaking was felt at the White House and all over the East Coast, as far south as Chapel Hill, N.C. Parts of the Pentagon, White House and Capitol were evacuated. There were no immediate reports of injuries.

It was centered near Loui-sa, Va., which is northwest of Richmond and south of Wash-ington.

Obama and many of the na-tion’s leaders were out of town on August vacation when the quake struck at 1:51 p.m. EDT. The shaking was felt on the Martha’s Vineyard golf course as Obama was just starting a round.

The East Coast gets earth-

quakes, but usually smaller ones and is less prepared than California or Alaska for shak-ing.

At Reagan National Airport outside Washington, ceiling tiles fell during a few seconds of shaking. Authorities an-nounced it was an earthquake and all flights were put on hold.

At the Pentagon in northern Virginia, a low rumbling built and built to the point that the building was shaking. People ran into the corridors of the government’s biggest building and as the shaking continued there were shouts of “Evacu-ate! Evacuate!”

In New York, the 26-story federal courthouse in lower Manhattan began swaying and hundreds of people were seen leaving the building. Court of-ficers weren’t letting people back in.

The quake came a day af-ter an earthquake in Colorado toppled groceries off shelves and caused minor damage to homes in the southern part of the state and in northern New Mexico.

No injuries were reported

as aftershocks continued Tues-day.

In Charleston, W.Va., hun-dreds of workers left the state Capitol building and employ-ees at other downtown office buildings were asked to leave temporarily.

“The whole building shook,” said Jennifer Bundy, a spokeswoman for the state Supreme Court. “You could feel two different shakes. Ev-erybody just kind of came out on their own.”

In Ohio, where office build-ings swayed in Columbus and Cincinnati and the press box at the Cleveland Indians’ Pro-gressive Field shook. At least one building near the State-house was evacuated in down-town Columbus.

In downtown Baltimore, the quake sent office workers into the streets, where lamp posts swayed slightly as they called family and friends to check in.

Social media site Twitter lit up with reports of the earth-quake from people using the site up and down the U.S. east-ern seaboard.

“People pouring out of buildings and onto the side-

walks and Into Farragut Park in downtown DC...,” tweeted Republican strategist Kevin Madden.

“did you feel earthquake in ny? It started in richmond va!” tweeted Arianna Huffington, president and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post Media Group.

Missouri Sen. Claire Mc-Caskill tweeted that her staff in Washington was in an “emer-gency location. Hope everyone is ok.”

John Gurlach, air traffic controller at the Morgantown Municipal Airport was in a 40-foot-tall tower when the earth trembled.

“There were two of us looking at each other saying, ‘What’s that?’” he said, even as a commuter plane was landing. “It was noticeably shaking. It felt like a B-52 unloading.”

Immediately, the phone rang from the nearest airport in Clarksburg, and a com-puter began spitting out green strips of paper — alerts from other airports in New York and Washington issuing ground stops “due to earthquake.”

5.9 quake shakes Virginia, Carolinas, D.C.bob lewis

Associated Press

At work today, I took charge of the team. Afterward, my boss asked where that came from. My answer was easy.

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Former essence editor speaks at ConvocationFormer Editor-In-Chief of

Essence Magazine, Susan L. Taylor, was the guest speaker at freshman convocation Aug. 16. This was Taylor’s third time speaking at N.C. A&T.

Many consider Taylor’s name synonymous with Essence Mag-azine. During her 27 years there, Taylor served as fashion and beauty editor, editor-in-chief, and editorial director. Taylor de-scribes Essence Magazine’s as a

publication that, “put the reigns of power in black wom-en’s hands.

M i s s A&T, Jas-mine Gurley, presided over the event, introducing Taylor, along with others who spoke

that evening. B e f o r e

Taylor spoke she shared a video

presentation for her CARES mentoring organization. The video included celebrities such as Mariah Carey, Oprah, Harry Belefonte, Taylor’s godson Sean “Diddy” Combs, and more, urg-ing viewers to take the time out of their day to mentor a child. Taylor then went on to discuss a myriad of topics with the fresh-men.

These topics included: how to manage your life, the value of education, personal relation-ships, the history of who we are, and spirituality. Her speech

was full of quotes, examples, and stories. Here are just a few memorable snippets from her speech:

“My brilliance is that I hired the smartest people I could find and treated them well,”

“Challenge yourself every single day to be in competition with one person… you,”

“Nobody is as fly as a black woman and we’re falling apart on the inside. Take some time out for yourself. Give yourself to you.”

She also put the spotlight on

rap music for a moment. “It hurts what you all allow,” she began. She went on to complain about how rappers only show one side of black women in their videos yet we still endorse and scream for them.

“We’re not standing up for anything. We don’t even stand for lyrics that make sense in rap,” she said.

Taylor then gave the audi-ence an assignment. To demand that a full spectrum of black beauty be shown in the media.

There’s a common parable

that says, “It takes a village to raise a child.”

Taylor urges that the village is burning. That is why it is im-portant for us to mentor as much youth as we can.

“You represent what they don’t show on TV,” she told the crowd of college students.

At the end of her speech, Taylor received a standing ova-tion.

– smobell@ncat.edu and fol-low her on Twitter @YngBl-kandFancy

sylvia obellManaging/News Editor

Taylor

Quake prompts review of nuclear plants in 6 states

wasHiNGToN (aP) — Nuclear plants from North Carolina to Michigan are under increased scrutiny after a 5.8 magnitude earthquake rocked the East Coast.

Twelve nuclear plants de-clared an “unusual event,” the lowest level of emergency, af-ter Tuesday’s earthquake, the Nuclear Regulatory Commis-sion said. Virginia’s North Anna Power Station, about 13 miles from the epicenter, issued an alert, the next highest emer-gency level. The quake was centered 40 miles northwest of Richmond.

Two nuclear reactors at North Anna were automatically taken off line by safety systems. No damage was reported at the plant, which is being powered by emergency diesel genera-tors.

The quake was also felt at the Surry nuclear plant near New-port News, Va.

Besides Surry, the other plants declaring an unusual event were the Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant in Maryland; Peach Bottom, Three Mile Island, Susque-hanna and Limerick plants in Pennsylvania; Salem, Hope Creek and Oyster Creek in New Jersey, Shearon Harris in North Carolina; and D.C. Cook and Palisades in Michigan. All were placed under increased scrutiny but continued to operate.

Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group, said U.S. nuclear plants responded as de-signed.

The NRC requires that plant designs take into account earth-quakes, tornadoes and other natural disasters.

“U.S. nuclear energy facili-ties have been tested repeatedly by Mother Nature this summer, with tornadoes in the Southeast and record flooding in Nebras-ka.

They have successfully met these challenges,” Kerekes said.

MaTTHew DalyAssociated Press

Where were you when this happened? We were there. You could be too. Contributors meetings are every Wednesday at

5 p.m. in the General Classroom Building.