Aftershocks rippled across much of West Virginia after a 5.8 earthquake rumbled in Virginia, but so far, no damage has been uncovered on the Mountain State’s nearly 6,500 bridges, the Department of Transportation said Wednesday.

Transportation Secretary Paul Mattox wasted no time mobilizing engineers and inspection teams to check out the spans and accomplished most of the Herculean task within 24 hours of the Tuesday afternoon quake in Virginia.

“We really never had a significant concern, but Secretary Mattox wanted to make doubly sure,” DOT spokesman Brent Walker said.

Since the seismic event startled West Virginians, the DOT has examined every major span and found nothing amiss, he said.

“We’re finishing up,” Walker said.

“I was talking to one guy who was making his way down to Chelyan. He’s done 10 bridges since this morning.”

Walker was among those who evacuated from Building No. 5 at the Capitol complex as a precaution, and Mattox was already getting his teams in action while bemused and surprised employees stood outside.

“We were on it pretty quickly,” he said.

West Virginians, perhaps more than residents elsewhere, have reason to be jittery when it comes to bridges. Back on Dec. 15, 1967, in rush-hour traffic, the Silver Bridge fell apart at Point Pleasant, plunging 46 people to their deaths in the Ohio River at the height of the Christmas shopping season.

Walker emphasized the number of bridges in West Virginia could be somewhat misleading.

“What constitutes a bridge?” he asked.

“It could be over a creek. I think what determines a bridge is its length. We’ve tweaked that a little bit. Certainly, we had a review where engineers and teams looked over every bridge in their inventory on paper. What we’ve done is we definitely wanted to make sure we got the big ones. And those are the major structures over our rivers and our larger structures.”

Engineers and the inspection teams are familiar with spans in their assigned areas, and all were asked to examine anything that might have posed a concern, the DOT spokesman said.

Larger spans are more susceptible to damage, given the greater distance between piers, Walker noted.

As stories began to spread in the aftershocks, the personal accounts appeared to grow in size.

“You should hear some of the stories,” Walker said.

“They’re getting better and better. Now, you’re hearing about people that fell out of their chairs. It just wasn’t that significant.”

To be on the safe side, however, the DOT left nothing to chance and decided to give all bridges the once-over, he said.

“We’re finding not only no damage, but it’s probably not much more than a lot of heavy trucks or heavy traffic crossing a bridge and the vibrations that are experienced there,” Walker said.

“Just normal.”

— E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com