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10 years after the DMV earthquake, National Cathedral still has work to be done

On August 23, 2011, the DMV shook for almost a minute.

WASHINGTON — Remember the Virginia earthquake? Ten years ago, on Aug. 23, 2011, the DMV shook for almost a minute.

The quake registered a 5.8 on the Richter scale and did some extensive damage to buildings across the area including the National Cathedral.

“The quake lasted 58 seconds,” National Cathedral Head Stonemason, Joe Alonso remembered.

Alonso still can recall every single second of that shake because when it ended, the historic cathedral’s beautiful spires resembled a game of Jenga. The spires bent, gargoyles split, and chunks of masonry fell to the ground.

“I thought, ‘Wow we’ve got a task ahead of us, that’s for sure,’” Alonso said.

He is not kidding. It’s been a ten-year task, so far. Repairing the spires and towers is not as simple as just slapping some glue on the pieces and putting them back up.

“It’s just the nature of the work, everything is handmade hand-done,” Alonso pointed out. “But that’s how the cathedral was built.”

For ten years, the stonemasons have had to reconstruct every single broken piece. Each gargoyle, stone face and column recut to fix the damage. Then the masons have to reset them hundreds of feet in the air by scaffolding or crane.

“It’s a wonderful feeling to finish a phase a section of the building, then move on to the next,” Alonso explained.

But 10 years and tens of millions of dollars in, the work is only half done.

“Like I said it’s very intricate and very time-consuming work,” he said. “What it costs to do this is very expensive and we are doing [a] sort of a pay as you go.”

As the stonemasons move from one tower to the next and one decade to the next, time has never appeared more paramount.

Alonso believes the 58 seconds were the difference between a slow, tedious repair and complete reconstruction.

“If the quake had lasted 2 or 3 more seconds the stuff that was like a Jenga game, would have just come completely down,” he said.

    

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