Quite a few people in the east have felt rolling houses. A 5+ hit east of us in Cleveland in 1986 and you could feel the thing go rolling through from east to west. The 5.8 that hit near DC in 2011 was felt over a wide area. Big ones in the east are much less frequent but cover a much larger area.
New Madrid fault quake of 1811 showing magnitudes east of the Mississippi.
If this sucker hit today, it would be a horrible mess. Much worse than anything this country has ever seen. Assuming a 7.7 quake, deaths estimated at 3,500, injured 80,000, and 7 million homeless.
http://philosophyofscienceportal.blogspot.com/2010/06/sleeping-dragonnew-madrid-seismic-zone.html