struggling to piece it together. from the capitol, we want to show you images from new york city. scenes just like this. police popping up in the backs of trucks. taking a close look at trucks, vans. here is what we have learned just within the past hour. all of this coming from intel sources in washington. they say their source of information is a communications intercept involving a known al qaeda operative in pakistan. this known operative is said to have discussed a vehicle bomb attack against either new york or washington on the tenth anniversary of 9/11. we ll get you more details on that momentarily. but first, i want to okay. we re going to get straight to our terror expert. terrorism analyst out of new york. paul, we have heard that authorities are trying to trace the movements of it s not one, it s not two. apparently these three individuals, including possibly one american, these three may have recently entered the u.s. or perhaps are on the way. what more can
need folks to leave. i ve been in there when planes have entered airspace and they told us to leave the capitol. during this instance, there was no such warning, there was no such direction from capitol police. it happened so quickly that the evacuation orders were given simply by word-of-mouth. by whatever office you were closest to. that was my experience just outside the senate chamber right above it. lisa with the latest from the capitol. wolf blitzer standing by for us in washington, d.c. wolf, i m sure you ll be talking about this in the situation room later today. we certainly will. it s an extraordinary and unusual situation. it hasn t just been in washington. it s been in virginia. it s been in maryland. up in new york, north carolina, ohio, michigan. they felt it all over the eastern part of the united states. the epicenter much closer to richmond, virginia. mineral, virginia. about 87 or so miles outside of washington, d.c. we re following what s going on very
pieces of cargo each day. we do everything in our power to anticipate these sorts of things. we understand those risks. we work very hard to develop these contingencies so that our customers don t see this. reporter: in the event of a quake here, fedex says the company could be up and running within one day. another memphis-based company constructeded their headquarters to withstand a 1.8 earthquake. it will let the ground move and not transfer all the motion from the ground to the building. reporter: it is the only structure in memphis built to such a high specification. what i think we almost need is an earthquake that s large enough to get people s attention but, of course, not large enough to do any damage or any significant damage or certainly no injuries. we don t want that.
we ll see you next week. we ve been following a developing story out of russia today where a plane carrying the president of poland along with dozens of members of that country s government crashed. everybody on board died. a lot of questions about the weather conditions at the time as well as the performance and age of of the aircraft. we ll talk to an aviation expert straight ahead about it. plus this the black thing right here is a base isolator. it s not attached to the ground. it s like a big hockey puck, but it will absorb the motion from the ground, let the ground move and not transfer all that motion. and what is that small black disk holding up? try an entire building. earthquake prevention in a major u.s. city that you may not realize is already at risk for the big one.
but it will absorb the motion from the ground, let the ground move and not transfer all that motion from the ground to the building. reporter: it is the only structure in memphis built to such a high spes fiske. about 150 to 200 earthquakes happen along the new madrid fault zone each year, the same risk for a major quake as what you would see in california. the one big difference is the very ground i stand upon here in memphis among the mighty mississippi river, it is made up of sediments about one mile deep that allows earthquake wave energy to travel about 20 times farther than it would in california, and cause more severe shaking. what i think we almost need is an earthquake that is large enough to get people s attention, but, of course, not large enough to do any damage or injure or any significant damage or certainly no injuries. we don t want that. i think it is going to take