(Voice of Paul) – An earthquake shook the densely populated New York City metropolitan area on Friday morning, the US Geological Survey said, with residents reporting they felt rumbling across the eastern seaboard in what is a relatively rare event for the region.
The government agency reported a quake with a preliminary magnitude of 4.8, with a preliminary location for the epicenter given as near Lebanon, New Jersey, and later as near Tewksbury and Whitehouse Station, all three of which are in Hunterdon county roughly in a 10-mile radius.
People reported feeling the quake in the states of Connecticut and Massachusetts, with the Weather Channel reporting that it was noticeable in Boston and residents in Philadelphia reporting they felt it, too. Tremors lasting for several seconds were felt more than 200 miles away near the New Hampshire border.
Over a dozen aftershocks were reported in the ensuing hours in the region, including a 4.0-magnitude quake early on Friday evening, according to the USGS.
The fire department of New York said on Friday there were no initial reports of damage or injury. But city dwellers were shocked and a little shaken up by the unexpected event, during which people sitting at desks or at home in high rises felt their whole building shake mildly for several seconds.
Camille Lewis was at a cafe in New York City when she felt the shaking.
“I haven’t been in an earthquake in New York and honestly I was scared that something was happening. I’m glad that the building I was in held up and honestly, I’m just glad that everybody is safe,” she said.
Lewis went on: “I was like, ‘Do I need to get under a table?’ Everybody was looking around, wondering what was going on. It lasted for a while. Definitely weird.”
The movement then passed but people were left jittery about aftershocks and busily checking in with friends and family, including children at school, briefly putting a high load onto cellphone networks, the city authorities reported.
The New York police department’s deputy commissioner of operations, Kaz Daughtry, said in a statement: “While we do not have any reports of major impacts at this time, we’re still assessing the impact.”
The UN security council was meeting at its headquarters in New York to discuss the situation in Gaza when the earthquake hit, shaking the building.
“New Yorkers should go about their normal day,” said the mayor, Eric Adams, but the governor, Kathy Hochul, said in a press conference that the quake was felt as far away as Baltimore, Maryland. “This is one of the largest earthquakes on the east coast to occur in the last century,” she said.
“Everyone should continue to take this seriously” in case of aftershocks, she added.
Planes were grounded at New York’s JFK and New Jersey’s Newark international airports and arriving flights were delayed. East coast train services were slowed but not canceled and New York City public transit continued running.
Hochul’s office reminded residents that “while highly unusual” the earthquake was not an isolated event as New York sites on geological fault lines. The tremor was felt to varying degrees across New England and south in Pennsylvania and Maryland, including in Baltimore, where Joe Biden was expected on Friday afternoon to tour the damage of the major bridge that collapsed there, blocking the port, 10 days ago.