An earthquake shook the densely populated New York City metropolitan area Friday morning, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, and residents across the Northeast reported rumblings in a region where people are not used to feeling the movement of the ground.
The agency reported an earthquake at 10:23 a.m. with a preliminary magnitude of 4.8, with the epicenter near Lebanon, New Jersey, or about 45 miles west of New York City and 50 miles north of Philadelphia. USG.S. Figures indicate that the earthquake could have been felt by more than 42 million people.
“Wow! An M4.8 hit New Jersey this morning around 10:30 am local time. The shaking was felt widely from Maine to Washington DC,” USGS Earthquakes wrote in a message with a map of the area where it was hit. he felt the tremor.
Wow! A M4.8 struck in New Jersey this morning around 10:30 am local time. Shaking was widely felt from Maine to Washington D.C. Did you feel this earthquake? Share your experience here: pic.twitter.com/bAjEbSgvwc
— USGS Earthquakes (@USGS_Quakes) April 5, 2024
New York City’s emergency notification system said in a social media post more than 30 minutes after the earthquake that it had no reports of damage or injuries in the city.
The New York Fire Department said on social media about an hour after the earthquake that it was “responding to calls and assessing structural stability” but that “there are no major incidents at this time.”
Amtrak said it was inspecting its tracks and had speed restrictions throughout the busy Northeast Corridor. New Jersey Transit posted in X that its train system was subject to delays caused by bridge inspections. The Philadelphia Area PATCO Rail Line suspended service out of what it said was “an abundance of caution.”
People in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Connecticut and other areas of the Northeast reported shaking.
Tremors that lasted several seconds were felt more than 200 miles away, near the Massachusetts-New Hampshire border.
In midtown Manhattan, traffic grew noisier as motorists honked their horns on the shaking streets. Some Brooklyn residents heard a crash and their building shaking.
In the Astoria neighborhood of New York City, Cassondra Kurtz was giving her 14-year-old chihuahua, Chiki, a cocoa butter massage for her dry skin. Kurtz was recording the moment on video, as an everyday reminder of the dog’s old age, when her apartment began shaking so hard that a large mirror audibly banged against a wall.
Kurtz assumed at first that a large truck was passing by. The video captured her looking around her, perplexed. Chiki, however, “wasn’t bothered at all.”
Attorney Finn Dusenbery was in a law office in midtown Manhattan. “The building shook and I thought the roof above me was going to collapse,” Dusenbery said. “I thought maybe the building was going to fall for a second, and I wanted to get out of the building when I felt it.”
Solomon Byron was sitting on a park bench in Manhattan’s East Village. “I felt this vibration and I thought, ‘Where is that vibration coming from?’” Byron said. “There are no trains near here or anything like that.” Byron said he didn’t realize there had been an earthquake until he received the alert on his cell phone.
At UN headquarters in New York, the tremor interrupted Save The Children’s executive director, Janti Soeripto, as she briefed an emergency session of the Security Council on the threat of famine in Gaza and the Israeli drone strikes that They killed aid workers there. Before long, diplomats’ phones were ringing with earthquake alerts.
The White House said in a statement that President Joe Biden had been briefed about the earthquake and was “in contact with federal, state and local officials as we learn more.”
New York Governor Kathy Hochul posted in X that the earthquake was felt throughout the state. “My team is assessing the impacts and any damage that may have occurred, and we will update the public throughout the day,” Ella Hochul said.
Philadelphia police asked people not to call 911 about seismic activity unless they were reporting an emergency.
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro said state officials were monitoring the situation. A spokesman for Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont was not aware of any reports of damage in that state.
The tremor evoked memories of the Aug. 23, 2011, earthquake that shook tens of millions of people from Georgia to Canada. With a magnitude of 5.8, it was the strongest earthquake to hit the East Coast since World War II. The epicenter was in Virginia.
That earthquake left cracks in the Washington Monument, prompted the evacuation of the White House and Capitol and shook New Yorkers three weeks before the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Earthquakes are less common on this side of the US because the East Coast is not located on a tectonic plate boundary. But East Coast earthquakes can still have a big impact: Its rocks are better at spreading seismic energy over great distances.
“If we had an earthquake of the same magnitude in California, it probably wouldn’t be felt that far away,” said USGS geophysicist Paul Caruso.
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