Movement for a Prepared America

A magnitude 5.0 earthquake hit near the border of Ontario and Quebec this afternoon.

The University of Pittsburgh's seismic station at the Allegheny Observatory detected the quake for 20 minutes.

It picked up the reading at about 1:43 p.m. - about two minutes after it started.

Residents in Toronto, upstate New York and Vermont could feel the ground shaking.

On Pittsburgh's South Side, the tremor was felt mostly by people on the upper floors of buildings on Carson Street.

They evacuated.

"Everybody was sort of shocked because we didn't know what it was," Diane Newhouse, an evacuee, said. "We didn't know really if the floor was going to cave in or what it was."

It was a frightening experience.

"I'm walking with a cane, I got to go down a fire escape – yeah I was scared, [I'm not going to] lie," Kevin Sieg said.

Emergency officials in Monongalia County, W. Va., also report that people in that area also felt tremors.

There have been no reports of damage.

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