Earthquake Causes Minor Damage in Gloucester County, West Deptford OK

John Walker III had his own early warning system for Tuesday's earthquake.

The trainer with Cole Bros. Circus, which has its big top pitched along Crown Point Road in West Deptford, just had to look out his trailer window, as the circus's elephants started raising their trunks in the air and trumpeting about five minutes before the temblor hit.

“I looked out my door, and they were–all three–standing, looking at me, their eyes bulging,” he said.

It was similar to their reactions ahead of major storms, Walker said. The big animals don't react to man-made sounds, like jet engines or trains, but always get squirrelly before anything natural.

“I think they have a better barometer inside of them,” Walker said.

While the quake spooked the elephants and sent people rushing out of their homes and businesses in the early afternoon, it left West Deptford largely unscathed.

Police Chief Craig Mangano said there hadn't been any panicked phone calls into the police station, and there hadn't been any reports of any damage to homes or businesses.

“We're not dealing with anything,” he said. “It's business as usual.”

At the Verga fire house, firefighters Charlie Sparks Sr. and Justin Rieger kept one eye on the television and the other on Facebook, as the doors to all the truck bays stood open while they braced for quake-related calls.

Sparks had been at work earlier in the afternoon, and when the quake hit, he watched his 1,000-pound work bench shift at least a foot in each direction, as the walls of the building trembled.

“My boss told me, 'Get out of work and go down to the firehouse,'” Sparks said.

While they hadn't had to respond to any calls, they figured on it being an all-nighter for the volunteers there, just as a precaution against the possibility of people returning home from work to damage.

Sparks wasn't the only one to get out of work early, as some businesses shut down in the wake of the earthquake. Workers at the Wyanoke Group on Grove Road milled around in the parking lot after being evacuated, before the office closed within 30 minutes of the temblor.

And as people tried to get in touch with family and friends, only to find cell networks overloaded, Facebook and Twitter seemed to be the place to go for updates.

On Facebook, Tammy Romansky posted that she had been sitting in her car outside Pat's Pizza on Hessian Avenue when she felt the shaking, while Gina Hicks joked that she thought she was missing out on a parade when she saw people pouring out on to Broad Street while sitting in the drive-through at the McDonald's across Broad Street from Underwood-Memorial Hospital.

Elsewhere in Gloucester County, there were a few incidents related to the quake–a building at Gloucester County College had to be evacuated because of a gas leak, and there was another gas leak on Craig Drive in Deptford.

In Woodbury, city engineer Tom Wilkinson checked the brickwork of the G.G. Green building on Broad Street as a precaution. Wilkinson said the building looked OK, but part of Broad Street was roped off as police kept a small crowd away from the soaring brick facade.

The state Office of Emergency Management said there were no other major issues related to the quake, and that bridges and roads all seemed to be intact.

Even trains and air traffic were affected. PATCO shut down the High-Speed Line from about 2 p.m. until 4:15 p.m. to check for possible damage, and the skies above Riverwinds, typically filled with commuter jets descending into Philadelphia International, were silent until a Southwest jet rumbled overhead just before 4:20 p.m.

Utility company PSE&G said there were no safety issues related to the quake, and that workers are out checking the integrity of the company's utility infrastructure, including gas lines, transmission lines and switching stations.

The quake triggered notice of an unusual event, which is normal in an earthquake, at the Salem and Hope Creek nuclear reactors at Artificial Island in Lower Alloways Creek, but there were no reports of damage there.