Photo : Collected
An earthquake shook the densely populated New York City metropolitan area Friday morning, the U.S. Geological Survey said, with residents across the Northeast reporting rumbling in a region where people are unaccustomed to feeling the ground move.
The agency reported a quake at 10:23 a.m. with a preliminary magnitude of 4.8, centered near Lebanon, New Jersey, or about 45 miles west of New York City and 50 miles north of Philadelphia. U.S.G.S. figures indicated that the quake might have been felt by more than 42 million people.
New York City’s emergency notification system said in a social media post more than 30 minutes after the quake that it had no reports of damage or injuries in the city. Mayor Eric Adams had been briefed on the quake, his spokesperson Fabien Levy said, adding, “While we do not have any reports of major impacts at this time, we’re still assessing the impact.”
In midtown Manhattan, the usual cacophony of traffic grew louder as motorists blared their horns on momentarily shuddering streets. Some Brooklyn residents heard a booming sound and their building shaking. In an apartment house in Manhattan’s East Village, a resident from more earthquake-prone California calmed nervous neighbors.
People in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Connecticut and other areas of the Northeast reported shaking. Tremors lasting for several seconds were felt over 200 miles away near the Massachusetts-New Hampshire border.
In New York City’s Astoria neighborhood, Cassondra Kurtz was giving her 14-year-old Chihuahua, Chiki, a cocoa-butter rubdown for her dry skin. Kurtz was recording the moment on video, as an everyday memory of the dog’s older years, when her apartment started shaking hard enough that a 9-foot (2.7-meter-tall) mirror banged audibly against a wall.
Kurtz assumed at first it was a big truck going by.
Messenger/Sumon
