Molly Podlesny and Rose Creasman Welcome, Correspondents

COLLEGE PARK, Md. — Though not typically thought of as an earthquake zone, the Southeast U.S. contains many seismically active areas. A 5.8-magnitude earthquake centered in Mineral, Virginia, surprised the D.C. metro area — and much of the East Coast — on Aug. 23, 2011, and it’s now being called the most widely felt earthquake in U.S. history.

Since then, greater awareness of earthquake protocol has been called for, and at 10:15 a.m. on Oct. 15, 2015, more than 200,000 people in Maryland took part in The Great SouthEast ShakeOut drill. This map shows earthquakes of 3.0 magnitude and above within 200 miles of Washington, D.C. since 1991.