“Crazy experience”: what became known about the unprecedented earthquake in New York

An earthquake struck a densely populated area of ​​New York City on Friday morning, according to the US Geological Survey. Residents reported feeling tremors along the entire east coast, a relatively rare event for the region, The Guardian writes.

The government agency reported the quake at a preliminary magnitude of 4.8, with the tentative location of the epicenter listed as near Lebanon, New Jersey, and then near Tewksbury and Whitehouse Station, all three of which are in Hunterdon County within about a 10-mile radius.

People reported feeling the tremors in Connecticut and Massachusetts, and the Weather Channel reported that they were noticeable in Boston, and Philadelphia residents reported feeling it too. The tremors, which lasted several seconds, were felt more than 200 miles away, near the New Hampshire border.

In the hours that followed, more than a dozen aftershocks were recorded across the region, including a magnitude 4.0 earthquake that struck early Friday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The New York City Fire Department said Friday there were no initial reports of damage or injuries. But residents of the city were shocked and a little shocked by the unexpected event, during which people sitting at tables or at home in high-rise buildings felt the entire building shake slightly for a few seconds.

Camilla Lewis was in a café in New York when she felt a tremor.

“I wasn’t in New York during the earthquake, and to be honest, I was scared that something had happened. I’m glad the building I was in was standing, and honestly, I’m just glad everyone is safe,” she said.

Lewis continues: “I thought, ‘Maybe I should crawl under the table?’ Everyone looked around, wondering what was happening. This went on for some time. Definitely weird.”

The traffic then stopped, but people remained nervous about aftershocks and actively contacted friends and relatives, including children at school, leading to high cell phone loads for a short time, city officials said.

New York Police Department Deputy Commissioner of Operations Kaz Daughtry said in a statement: “While we do not have any reports of serious consequences at this time, we are still assessing them.”

The UN Security Council was meeting at its headquarters in New York to discuss the situation in Gaza when an earthquake struck, shaking the building.

“New Yorkers should go about their business as usual,” Mayor Eric Adams said, but Gov. Kathy Hochul said at a news conference that the quake was felt as far away as Baltimore, Maryland. “This is one of the largest earthquakes to hit the East Coast in the last century,” she said.

“Everyone needs to continue to take this seriously” in the event of aftershocks, she added.

The planes were detained at New York’s John F. Kennedy and Newark international airports in New Jersey. Train service on the East Coast was slowed but not canceled, and New York City transit continued to operate.

The governor’s office reminded New Yorkers that “while extremely unusual,” the earthquake was not an isolated event because New York lies on geological fault lines. The tremors were felt to varying degrees across New England and as far south as Pennsylvania and Maryland, including in Baltimore, where Joe Biden was expected to inspect damage to a major bridge there Friday afternoon, blocking the port. days ago.

Among those who took Friday’s quake in stride was Roisin Brady, 36, an English teacher at a private school in Manhattan. She said her students were going to write poems about the earthquake.

Brady and her students were already planning to use the upcoming solar eclipse as material for their poetry collection. But the recent earthquake is another rare event that students at her high school can write about.

Brady was in her bedroom in a fourth-floor Brooklyn apartment when the earthquake struck, working remotely on student reports. Her boyfriend was in the kitchen yelling at Brady about glassware that was vibrating.

She noticed that the clothes in the couple’s wardrobe were shaking. Then she realized that the buildings on the other side of the street were also shaking.

“It was just unreal,” said Brady, from Glasgow, Scotland. “Seeing my boyfriend’s clothes dangling and then swinging was just surreal,” she added.

The shaking brought back memories of the Aug. 23, 2011 earthquake that affected tens of millions of people from Georgia to Canada. The magnitude of the earthquake was 5.8. It was the strongest earthquake to hit the East Coast since World War II. The epicenter was in Virginia.

The quake left cracks in the Washington Monument, prompted the evacuation of the White House and Capitol and terrified New Yorkers three weeks before the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

Meanwhile, on Friday, the Empire State Building’s official social media account reassured its fans:

James Pittinger, mayor of Lebanon, New Jersey, near the quake’s epicenter, said there were no reports of injuries or significant damage, but people were worried. “I was sitting in my home office when things started falling off the walls and shelves,” Pittinger said. “It was a crazy experience.”

Earthquakes in the eastern U.S. are felt over a much larger area because the bedrock is much older and harder, which makes it easier for seismic energy to be transmitted, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Rocks in the western United States are younger and contain more faults, which absorb energy from earthquakes.