AQUIVER: A crowd gathers yesterday at Pearl Street and Foley Square after office buildings and courthouses were evacuated following the quake. (Michael Bocchieri/Getty Images)
A terrifying quake — the strongest on the East Coast in more than 60 years — yesterday struck Virginia, reverberating in Washington and New York, where it swayed structures, sent bricks raining down and forced the evacuation of the White House and buildings in Manhattan.
“Someone yelled out, ‘Bomb!’ and everybody started running,” Arkia Reed, 21, told The Post in DC’s Union Station, where the force of the tremor caused large chunks of plaster to plummet from massive, vaulted ceilings.
At the Capitol, the building shook so violently that papers and TV sets toppled off desks.
“Chandeliers were shaking. Walls were shaking. Pandemonium!” said stunned Jerry Hunter Jr., 30, an administrative worker there.
The quake, which registered 5.8 on the Richter Scale — the strongest along the Eastern Seaboard since a New York temblor in 1944 — struck at 1:51 p.m. just outside the tiny town of Mineral, Va. The site is 40 miles northwest of Richmond and 300 miles south of New York.
No casualties were reported, but the effects were substantial and far-reaching:
* Scores of buildings in lower Manhattan — including City Hall and federal and state courthouses — were evacuated, sending thousands of workers spilling into the street.
* Travel at local airports was temporarily suspended as jittery officials checked for potential damage.
* The White House and Pentagon were evacuated as both structures started swaying.
* Two nuclear reactors at the North Anna Power Plant, in the same county as the epicenter, were shut down out of fear of disaster.
* All DC memorials and monuments were abruptly closed, and concerns grew over the famed National Cathedral, where three spires on the central tower broke off.
When the quake struck, President Obama was just starting a round of golf on Martha’s Vineyard, where shocks were also felt. He led a conference call with emergency chiefs later in the afternoon.
The ground quaked as far south as Charleston, SC, and north of New Hampshire, experts said.
The epicenter was estimated to be a little less than four miles below the Earth’s surface.
Concern over aftershocks remained, although officials assured the public that the chance of any devastating temblors was slim.
In Manhattan, where the quake registered just over 2 on the Richter, business came to an abrupt halt.
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. was standing at a podium in front of 100 reporters in an eighth-floor courthouse room on Centre Street — and was just two sentences into a press conference on the dismissal of charges in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case — when the building started moving.
“I’m OK, OK, OK,” he said, smiling as his security force quickly pushed him to the door. Reminding them he is a former West Coaster, he said, “I’ve been through earthquakes in Seattle all the time.”
Mayor Bloomberg was in his second-floor office at City Hall preparing for an interview with a radio reporter when the quake struck.
“I remember feeling my right elbow was leaning against something, and there was a vibration, and the vibration kept getting bigger, and [people] started to say, ‘Hey, what’s going on?’ ” he said. “You could feel it. And then it got substantial.”
Other New Yorkers felt the bad vibes, too, and bombarded the city’s 311 and 911 help and emergency lines.
A whopping 6,900 calls were made to 911 in one half-hour alone, compared with the usual 800, the mayor said.
Still, “with the exception of a few bricks coming down — which incidentally happens every day in our city — there was just nothing to report” damage-wise, Bloomberg said.
“Quite honestly, I am more concerned about our preparations for a hurricane that’s approaching Florida that could get here,” he said.
As for the state’s nuclear-power plants, Gov. Cuomo said, “There was never any report of any issue whatsoever.
“All the news is good news,” he said.
In Mineral, Va., the hardest-hit Eastern location, resident Carmen Bonano was watching her 1-year-old granddaughter at home when the quake struck.
“The fridge came off the wall, and things started falling. I just pushed the refrigerator out of the way, grabbed the baby and ran,” Bonano said.
In northern Virginia, at the Pentagon, the panic started as the rumbling grew, workers said.
Shouts of “Evacuate! Evacuate!” rang out, and thousands fled.
At Reagan National Airport outside Washington, tiles dropped from the ceiling, and all flights were suspended.
Edward Wieland, 56, of Arlington, Va., a systems administrator at the Arena Stage, said, “I was sound asleep at home, and then my dog, Elmer, started barking like crazy and the house started shaking. I sat up in bed, and the bed was bouncing and I was like, ‘Damn, this is an earthquake!’ ”
At the National Academy of Sciences in downtown DC, worker Andrew Huber, 25, said, “At first, I assumed that it was a big gust of wind or a train passing under the office. Everyone else was saying it might be terrorism.
“We didn’t get evacuated until we took a look out the window and saw everyone else standing on the street.”
When the quake hit, Hildigunnur Thorsteinsson, 31, was working at the Energy Department geothermal-science office in the basement of a federal building near the Capitol.
“I am used to earthquakes, but we weren’t expecting one here,” she said. “It was a little bit scary.”
Annmarie Foley, 50, who was visiting DC from Massachusetts with her family, said she thought a bomb had gone off when the floor of the National Archives starting shaking.
“Nobody knew what was going on,” she said.
Additional reporting by S.A. Miller in DC, Erik Kriss in Albany, David Seifman, Laura Italiano, Wilson Dizard and Bill Sanderson in NY and Post Wire Services