CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- People across West Virginia felt their homes and offices shake Tuesday afternoon after an earthquake struck north of Richmond, Va., at 1:51 p.m.

The earthquake registered 5.8 on the Richter scale at its epicenter near Mineral, Va.

Quakes of that magnitude rarely strike the East, and the last comparable temblor to hit Virginia happened more than 100 years ago.

The Kanawha County Courthouse and other buildings in downtown Charleston were evacuated, as was the state Capitol.

The quake was felt all over the East Coast, as far north as New England and south to the Carolinas. The U.S. Capitol in Washington was also evacuated.

Huntington District U.S. Army Corps of Engineers inspectors were in the field Tuesday afternoon inspecting all lock and dam and reservoir projects within the district.

"As far as we can tell, there doesn't seem to be any damage," said corps spokesman Chuck Minsker.

After the quake, state Department of Environmental Protection inspectors were dispatched to inspect larger coal-slurry impoundments such as the Brushy Fork and Shumate impoundments in Raleigh County. Those inspections were expected to be completed by Tuesday night, said DEP spokesman Tom Aluise. All other impounding structures should be examined within 72 hours, Aluise said.

Tom Clarke, director of the DEP Division of Mining and Reclamation, said coal-waste impoundments are designed with a factor of safety built in, meant to allow them to withstand 1.2 times the largest event that might hit them.

"It's a pretty substantial design factor," Clarke said.

Clarke could not immediately say what size earthquake coal-waste impoundments in Southern West Virginia would be designed to withstand.

Brian Long, who runs DEP's non-coal dam section, said his office was notifying dam owners via email to check their dams for any earthquake damage. Long was considering having DEP engineers check dams in the eastern part of the state that were already listed as having problems.

Kanawha County Metro 911 answered more than 350 calls in 45 minutes immediately following the quake, but Kanawha County Commission President Kent Carper said there were no reports of damage, other than minor cracking in the plaster at the old courthouse.

Officials at Yeager Airport were doing a physical walkthrough of the runway and construction zone at the airport, and Carper said they were calling in an engineer to make sure there was no visible structural damage.

West Virginia American Water spokeswoman Laura Jordan said utility workers had checked the company's water lines after the earthquake and found no problems.

Carper said the county immediately ordered the Emergency Operations Center activated, and staff was on hand to answer the influx of calls.

Carper said numerous calls described shelves being knocked off the walls and cabinets falling over across, but no injuries.

"The downtown high rise office buildings shook significantly. The old courthouse was literally shaking," Carper said.

Jennifer Wintz was at work alone in her office on the fifth floor of the Capitol City Office Building on Quarrier Street, a bobblehead doll sitting on her desk.

"The next thing I feel was the office is kind of going sideways," she said. And her bobblehead doll was moving of its own accord.

"It started shaking its head pretty quickly," she said. "The next thing I know I hear a lot of people in the building rushing downstairs.

"...I checked Twitter to see what was going on, and Twitter updates were coming through as a flurry -- of an earthquake being felt in Virginia and being felt up the East Coast."

And that's when she got out of the building, she said, standing on the sidewalk minutes after she had evacuated. "I am a little freaked out. It's a little scary to think that something like this would happen here in Charleston, West Virginia."

 It was naptime at the Fort Hill at James Mark Day Care Center on Quarrier Street when the shaking started, said director Nikki Charlton.

"They've been asleep, poor babies," she said as dozens of children were led by hand and several babies were pushed in cribs on wheels back into the building. "I could feel it rattling and everything," Charlton said.

Security guard Henry Pickens was sitting in the lower level of the downtown Kanawha County library. "I felt my chair shake," he said.

At first, he thought it was a crane or some heavy equipment vehicle passing by on Quarrier Street. "We went through our evacuation plan and started evacuating people out. I was clearing the building."

His Army experience -- he served in Vietnam and Korea -- helped him keep his head since he had a job to do. "I'm military so I try to adapt to situations. Nothing was falling down."

But he conceded it was a notable thing when you see the heft of the library's stone structure, a building which occupies almost a city block. "It was one of the original fall-out shelters in the downtown area. For a building that size to shake...", he said.

Nervous principals decided to evacuate students from some schools, including East Bank Middle School and DuPont Middle School, said Beverly Jarrett, safety administrator for Kanawha County Schools.

Jarrett talked to officials with Metro 911 and then sent phone and e-mail messages out to school principals and other administrators.

She informed them -- based on Metro 911 information -- that unless they'd seen signs of structural damages to their buildings, it was safe to keep students inside the schools. There were no reports of damage to any county schools, she said.         

Liza Cordeiro, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Education, said the department did not receive any reports of damage to schools.

In Barbour County, part of a chimney collapsed at the county courthouse in Philippi at about 2:15 p.m., according to Emergency Management Director Larry Allen. Allen said the chimney fell on the outside of the building.

Allen said the courthouse was closed after the fall, and county officials were calling in a structural engineer to assess the building.

No reports of gas line ruptures across the state were reported to Mountaineer Gas, according to Jim Searls, manager of gas systems operations for the company.

Bayer CropScience spokesman Tom Dover said officials at his company's Institute plant conducted a walk-through inspection after the quake and found no problems.

David Hastings, a DuPont spokesman, said his company's plants in Belle and Parkersburg reported no damaged, disruptions or impacts to the operations.

Carper said Kanawha County was "relying" on utility companies to do routine inspections after "an anomaly like this."

"When something like this happens, you worry about damage which is not visible," he said.

At the state Capitol Complex, workers gathered outside the Statehouse and other buildings.

One woman who works in the Secretary of State's office said that at first, she thought someone was behind her, shaking her chair.

The tremors knocked her foam cup of iced tea off her desk, she said.

Sen. Richard Browning was at the Capitol to attend a bill-signing ceremony and headed to his office afterward.  

"My chair started moving first," the Wyoming County Democrat said. Then, he saw the American and state flags that stand in his office start to move.

All buildings on the Capitol campus were evacuated, said state Department of Administration spokeswoman Diane Holley-Brown. Workers returned to the buildings less than an hour later, after members of the Charleston Fire Department and the state's General Services Division concluded there were no safety problems caused by the earthquake.

No damage was reported at state buildings, she said. 

Browning said he experienced an earthquake in Taiwan a few years ago. Compared to that, he said, "this was barely noticeable."