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Earthquake rattles parts of NB

Government office workers who were forced to flee the Centennial Building a few minutes before 3 p.m. said they felt as many as two short tremors.

"It felt like I was dizzy, then I heard someone else talking about, and I figured, 'OK, I'm not going crazy,'" said Phil Theriault, who was on the fourth floor of the six-floor building. "It was like nothing I ever felt before. It was like being on top of a wobbly tower."

Another office worker who had been on the first floor of the building said she was also fooled by the seismic event, which people said lasted anywhere from five to 30 seconds.

"I thought I might be having a little attack of vertigo," Sarah Ingersoll said. "You know when you're driving across the bridge and one of those trucks goes by and the bridge kinda moves? It kind of felt like that."

Christina Winsor, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, was talking by phone with a Times & Transcript reporter when the earthquake started swaying her office just before 3 p.m., forcing her to cut the call short.

A short time later, her boss, Education Minister Jody Carr, sent a Twitter message.

"Felt building sway at Education Department on King St. Wow. All evacuated."

The downtown Fredericton headquarters of NB Power and the Bank of Montreal building were also evacuated.

Despite the evacuation, NB Power spokeswoman Kathleen Duguay managed to respond within 15 minutes to a reporter's e-mail asking about the province's nuclear generating station at Point Lepreau, as well as other power facilities.

"Our instrumentation at the station did not signal any seismic activity at Point Lepreau," she wrote. "Our staff also did not sense any movement. I do not have any information on other NB Power locations at this time with the exception of NB Power Head Office in Fredericton and other offices downtown Fredericton."

Natural Resources Canada's seismographs near St. George and near Moncton did, however, pick up slight activity.

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