is really prepared for this kind of quake or worse, and the other breaking news story we're following, bullets flying from moammar gadhafi's compound in tripoli, only hours after it was captured by rebels. cnn goes inside the compound as chaos, looting and celebrations unfold. we're following a very dangerous and uncertain situation in libya right now. i'm wolf blitzer. you're in "the situation room." millions of americans on the east coast and beyond heard the ground rumble and felt buildings sway. the earthquake that struck just a few hours ago measured 5.8, the strongest to rock the area in over a century. for this part of the country it's a rare event. many people were dazed and scared as they poured into the streets. some are still feeling emotional aftershocks. the quake was centered almost 90 miles southwest of washington, d.c., and northern virginia. it was felt to some degree as far away as both detroit and atlanta. damage reports are still coming in. no word yet of serious injuries. major airports and national monuments here in washington were closed. the white house, congress and the pentagon were evacuated. look at what we experienced here at cnn's bureau here in washington. we're going to show you a video, the dramatic video and the sound that's coming up. i want to bring in homeland security correspondent jeanne meserve working the story for us. it's fair to say, jeanne, a lot of folks watched the reaction, especially people at the department of homeland security and elsewhere, and are wondering is this part of the country ready for this kind of a situation? >> well, this is an earthquake zone, wolf, clearly not one as active as the west coast or the new madrid fault in the middle of the country but it is a zone that does occasionally have earthquakes. one of the things that the administrator of fema, craig fugate said to me in an earthquake you're not supposed to evacuate a building. you're supposed to find a safe place inside and leave. clearly that's not what happened in our building and other buildings surrounding us where we felt the earthquake. people went down the stairwells out into the street. things appeared to be orderly, but it does point out the fact that people in this part of the country have not been educated about earthquake protocol. they have things to learn. you can bet that fema will be underlining that. we are already pointing people to their website where they can get information about what to do before, after and during an earthquake. some other things that have come up that people have pointed to, traffic. a lot of people immediately tried to leave the national capital region. the roads here are always congested at rush hour. today they were congested a little bit earlier. i spoke to a regional official who said they were using all the tools that they have at their disposal in terms of cameras, in terms of communications, among agencies. their feelings is that things went relatively smoothly. you might not agree if you were stuck out on one of their roadways. from their vantage point things went relatively well. they told me they will be looking at what happened today and trying to draw any additional lessons about what they may need to do for events in the future. the third thing that people learned a little bit about today was communications. if you picked up your cell phone in the earthquake zone and you were trying to make a call you found out that you simply could not do it. the system was too congested. emergency officials say that's something you should have expected. that is going to happen. you can't take for granted in an emergency you're going to be able to make a cell phone communication. texting works better and tweeting was working, that everybody should be thinking about having alternative means of communication and before an event like this they should have a communications plan in place. we're looking at irene coming up the east coast. craig fugate says a lot of things give absolutely no warning. you have to be prepared and have to be ready and apparently a lot of us on the east coast had not thought seriously about earthquakes and what we might need to do to be ready for that. >> a lot of government employees in washington simply evacuated all of the federal buildings. the epicenter was 80 or 90 miles away from washington, not far from richmond, virginia, and there's a nuclear power plant in that area as well, jeanne. what do we know about that? as soon as i heard about an earthquake, knowing there are nuclear power plants in this area, i'm beginning to think of japan, the fukushima nuclear power plant there. what do the experts here, authorities say? >> i spoke to the nuclear regulatory commission. they say the north anna plant, the plant closest to the epicenter in mineral, virginia, two units, both of them tripped offline, emergency diesel generators went into police station operation. that is exactly what is supposed to happen. this is categorized as an unusual event, the lowest category in the nrc spreadsheet of things that might occur. in addition, there are many other nuclear events in the zone that was affected by this earthquake, all of them, too, have registered an unusual event but as far as we know, the north anna units are the only ones that have tripped offline. you can bet inspectors are going over those plans with a fine toothed comb to determine if there is any sort of damage, any sort of impact that we need to be concerned about. >> we'll stay on that part of the story. i want to bring in chad myers from the cnn weather center. chad this is an area that was so widespread that felt this earthquake, give us a little sense of how big of a deal this is. >> it was a pretty big deal because the east coast is sitting on one plate. we think of the west coast and the different plates and all of the different faults. when one shakes, there's enough of a break that the next one doesn't shake. we don't have those breaks. and if you'll take a look at these red dots that's all one minute. the shake in this case was a little bit big here. this was the first p wave, almost that box car event where all the dirt and the earth moves in one direction and the s wave that up and down shaking that really shakes the buildings apart was almost one solid minute long, if you were in virginia. now people that aren't there felt it a little bit shorter, and the farther you were away from the epicenter, the shorter this really felt, but if we get right to this magnitude 5.8 west along the james river, west of richmond virginia in ranko county, it lost outside power. the outside power was cut to the plant and that's why the generators had to do g and that's why the entire east coast was shaking and going oh what are we doing now. let's get to the one thing now, the whole shaking reports from massachusetts through pennsylvania, all the way down to alabama, parts of buffalo and ontario as well, put it there, all one plate. when it shook there the whole plate literally started to vibrate and that's what doesn't happen on the west coast. the usgs has a phenomenal system now. this is just, we have upgraded the usgs, the geological survey tremd utsly. you don't even understand what we did here. this is what's called the shake map and also the pager map. the estimated fatalities from this, there is a 76% chance that less than one person died. there is a 35% chance that we had $100 million or more damage somewhere, and we also can tell you that it was a very strong shaking for 23,000 people. there was a moderate shaking for 76,000 people and over the east coast, if you add the numbers together, we're talking about 11 million people that actually felt some shaking whatsoever today. not a lot of that shaking, it was really just rattling nerves, not rattling buildings but it shook pretty good, the 5.8 -- it was a 5.9 for awhile, reduced it to 5.8 so the real number after it settles down is 5.8 wolf. >> i think i felt and maybe i didn't, maybe it was my imagination, chad, some aftershocks, modest aftershocks. >> yes. >> after this 5.8 earthquake but what do we know about the aftershocks and what can we expect in the hours to come? >> the main quake right there, 5.8, and there have been really two that have shown up on usgs about a 2.8 and a 2.2 not very far from that epicenter. if you take a 5.8 quake and we take the first number that 5 and subtract 1 that's 4.8, technically the largest aftershock we can see and you might feel that in d.c. because 5.8 down to 4.8, 4.8 is a pretty big shake. right now the biggest one only 2.8. >> there are times correct me if i'm wrong, chad, the aftershock could be more powerful than the initial earthquake, is that right? >> it is and we call that a foreshock. we won't know whether this is a foreshock or aftershock until another one comes but typically foreshocks only happen about one hour before the real quake. it's been now almost two, two and a half hours so the potential for a bigger quake is going down rapidly. >> watch this video from one of the studios, one of the sets here in the d.c. bureau. let me play the video and then we'll discuss. all right, you can see how that camera was beginning to shake in that studio. you saw one of the anchors, i think from cnn espaniol standing in front of the camera. i was there in this 11-story building, everybody felt it, and people obviously quickly discovered it was an earthquake and they began running out of the building. >> some people said they actually felt two separate shakes, a shake, a stop, and a shake. and let me tell you why that happens, because there are p waves and s waves and they act completely differently across the earth. the first wave that you felt which was right here, this kind of big part right there is when you run into the back of a car and that car runs into the next car and the next car and that's what the dirt, earth and the soil does, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom so that was the rear ending of the freight train and the next wave is the s wave, the wave that looks like this. if you put a building right there and that building shakes a lot, especially if you're on a higher floor you'll feel it. that's the secondary wave, the wave that goes through the earth, and that's that big wave right there. >> well everybody felt it in this building, originally we didn't know what it was, but initially i thought it might be some construction going on, some thought it could be terrorism, began to worry about that. >> of course. >> within a few seconds we realized it was an earthquake. chad, i want you to stay with us. we have more coverage coming up on this earthquake here along the east coast of the united states. i want to get to the other huge story, the breaking news that we're following out of libya, rebels today seizing control of moammar gadhafi's presidential compound in tripoli. this is a chaotic, historic day in the libyan capital, just after 11:00 p.m. in tripoli. we've got some late word of gunfire in that presidential compound, hours after the rebels moved in and forced our own cnn crew to leave. but earlier, cnn's very courageous journalist sara sidner got inside the compound with the rebels. she dodged bullets to show the world what was going on live. look at this videotape. >> reporter: that is the first part of the eastern gate. there are large blast holes in that gate. the sun is setting in this area just behind us so it's starting to become darker. over here you're seeing them, these are cars that belonged to the gadhafi regime. they are sitting blowing off rounds behind them. that is a security -- [ gunfire ] i'm going to try not to get hit by any of those rounds. if you go just over here you see the people streaming through the main gate. that's all the way into the compound so you see [ gunfire ] streaming into the main gate of the compound, a lot of spoke coming from the compound. you see these huge walls. these were supposed to be protective walls. [ gunfire ] this also gives you a sense of the power of the gadhafi regime. [ gunfire ] this honestly is the nicest part of the city. you're seeing these large, very nicely -- [ gunfire ] all right, i'm going to back up. >> we're going to be speaking with sara, joining us live in a few minutes. we'll get an eyewitness account of what's going on now. there's late word of gunfire inside a tripoli hotel where international journalists have been trapped. the hotel is still held by gadhafi's forces who may be using the journalists as human shields. a senior nato official is warning this war is not over yet and this hour no sign of moammar gadhafi or any word about his fate. we'll check in with our own matthew chance, holed up with the other journalists inside that hotel in tripoli. much more on that coming up. so many questions about the rebels. they are apparently in control of so much of the city. how much can they be trusted? i'll talk to the transitional council's ambassador of the united states, he's standing by live and much more on the earthquake that shook the east coast of the united states, the lingering fear, the possible danger, our own correspondent brian todd is traveling toward the epicenter in virginia right now, we're about to check in with him. coffee doesn't have vitamins... unless you want it to. new splenda® essentials™ no calorie sweetener with b vitamins, the first and only one to help support a healthy metabolism. three smart new ways to sweeten. same great taste. new splenda® essentials™. we're going to libya and check in with sara sidner live in tripoli. stand in for that. right now jack with "the cafferty file." >> this has nothing to do with this but great job this woman is doing at great personal risk to herself. she reminds me of christiane amanpour, march into the teeth of the dragon, where is the story i'm willing to cover it. god bless her, i hope she takes care of herself and gets out of there already but god bless her. the national debt is increasing at the rate of $3 million a minute, $3 million a minute. meanwhile the president and congress are on vacation. when the president took office january 2009 national debt $10.6 trillion. three years later, less than three years $14.6 trillion. president obama presided over the fastest, largest increase in the national debt in our nation's history. there's something to be proud of, something you won't see in the re-election campaign promos either. president president george bush it increased $4.9 trillion, but it took eight years to increased that much. mr. obama has the distunks of putting an additional $4 trillion in the hole in less than three years, 900 plus days and still talking about wanting to spend more money. it's just insane. these rates of borrowing are unsustainable. it is far and away the biggest problem we have ever faced, ever. and our country's very survival will be at stake if this isn't addressed. whether anyone likes it or not the tea party, those rabble rousers seem to be the only group that grasps the severity of all of this. they became a force during the midterm elections because of the growing national debt and refusal of washington to do anything about it. the recent debt ceiling standoff was driven by a group of only 60 tea party members and the house of representatives. you can bet the tea party is going to continue to ring the alarm bells as we head into the 2012 elections. and they should. because remember this -- in the time you've spent listening to this segment of "the caffert file" 1:30, the national debt has gone up by more than $5 million. what effect will the tea party have on the 2012 elections? go to cnn.com/caffertfile and post a comment there or go to our post on "the situation room's" facebook page. sara sidner is outside of tripoli now in zawiyah. i want to show you pictures from benghazi, the second largest city in libya, where the home of the opposition has been over these many, many months. they are celebrating on the streets of benghazi right now. they think that moammar gadhafi's regime is about to collapse, even though he still controls apparently some small pockets in the capital of tripoli. let's bring in sara sidner right now. sara, all of us were watching your reports today as you went in with the rebels, went in with the opposition to the presidential compound in tripoli. we were scared, i must say, i was frightened, i was worried about you, worried about our producers, our camera crews. >> reporter: yes. >> give us a flavor of what it was like when you went with them and they went in to see where gadhafi was, they thought he was ho holed up in there. >> reporter: yes, i think one of the extraordinary things was that you can hear in the neighborhoods people celebrating but you weren't quite sure because we were still hearing blasts and booms from bab al ziziyah, the ga zdhafi compound. we decided we're going to see it for ourselves. all of us agreed we'd go in together as a team, check out the team and if it was safe we'd go further in and ended up going right through the eastern gate, walking right in with rebels first stopping us saying hold on, who are you? we said cnn. they said come on in, we've been watching. we got to see people celebrating. we saw people bringing out ap. in addition, bringing out cars. it was an extraordinary, extraordinary day for all of our crew to watch this happen. it would be watching this happen if there was a rebellion in the u.s. and they went to the white house. it is that big a deal here. people see this compound as gadhafi's personal home as gadhafi's personal space. it's something that many people couldn't even access unless you were a close ally or friend of moammar gadhafi and to be able to go in there and to see what he had and some of those buildings, people have never been inside, and then they were taking things apart, looking through files. it was an absolutely historic moment, an amazing place to be, but also a dangerous one, because when they start firing off all of those rounds, wolf, i got to tell you, you know, we were getting sort of hit sometimes with some of the casings of those bullets, and it does give you pause for a second when you're in that kind of situation. >> we did, i do remember at one point some of the guys, the rebels were coming out of that compound and showing you some of those files, including a medical file for one of moammar gadhafi's sons, saif al islam, who is apparently still on the loose right now. talk a little bit about that. >> reporter: yes, that was really another one of those moments, where you're not sure that they really have something, and then they come to you, and i was reading through it. some of it was in english, and it was a medical file, clearly, there were even receipts, stamped the file, it said his name, saif al islam on the front and another one that said his wife's name, and we were opening and looking through them, and trying to decipher what exactly we had, but it was clear that someone had put together a file that was pretty comprehensive of the medical state of saif al islam and they were able to go into some building inside of the compound and pull these items out and start looking and leafing through them. it is not something that people in these neighborhoods ever thought that they would be able to do. the celebrations in the neighborhood directly people to bab al aziziya, families coming out to celebrate along with the rebels saying libya is free, no more moammar gadhafi, that he no longer has a grip on this country and not on tripoli either, really one of those kinds of days where you can't believe your eyes. >> we're going to check back with you in a few moments if we can, stand by, sara sidner doing amazing reporting for all of us. we'll go back to tripoli and go back to matthew chance, holed up in the hotel as well. the other story on the east coast of the united