Nightly News   |  August 23, 2011

Moderate quake has big reach

NBC’s Tom Costello reports from the earthquake epicenter in Mineral, Va., where the roof of the town hall collapsed in the quake.

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This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>> want to go where the jolt was intense. tom costello is with us from the epicenter of all this. again, a small town and tom, i understand it's a railroad town . one woman interviewed today thought there had been an accident with the train tracks . it was that severe a jolt in mineral, virginia?

>> reporter: here are the tracks right here, the train goes through about every 90 minutes . we pulled in 15 or 20 minutes ago. look at back of the town hall , it was sheared off by the vibrations and on my other side the fire department has pulled all their trucks out of the station and they're concerned the fire station itself may have been compromised. let me show you what's going on throughout central virginia . structural damage . i saw a lot of chimneys down and some of these homes date back to the 1800s and the nearby nuclear plant , the north anna plant. two reactors shut down automatically, protected immediately after the earthquake hit and we're told of the four diesel generators that back up the system, three are working properly and there's plenty of cooling and no concern there. so amazing, given the size of this earthquake, no serious injuries or damage and the nuclear plant is safe.

>> unbelievably felt across 22 separate states. tom costello where it all started today. tom, thanks.