An earthquake shook the densely populated New York City metropolitan area on Friday morning, the US 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 with a preliminary magnitude of 4.8, centred near Lebanon, New Jersey, or about 72 kilometes west of New York City and 80kms north of Philadelphia.
USGS figures indicated the quake might have been felt by more than 42 million people.
People in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Connecticut, Washington, DC and other areas of the Northeast reported shaking. Tremors lasting for several seconds were felt over 322kms away, near the Massachusetts-New Hampshire border.
In midtown Manhattan, traffic grew louder as motorists blared their horns on shuddering streets. Some Brooklyn residents heard a boom and their building shaking.
Long after the quake subsided, residents were startled anew by loud emergency alerts on their mobile phones.
The light quake was shallow, just below the surface at five kilometre depth, which made it easier for residents in affected areas to feel the shaking.
New York 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.”
The Fire Department of New York said on social media about an hour after the quake that it was “responding to calls and evaluating structural stability” but that there are “no major incidents at this time”.
At UN headquarters in New York, the shaking interrupted the chief executive of Save The Children, Janti Soeripto, as she briefed an emergency Security Council session on the threat of famine in Gaza and the Israeli drone strikes that killed aid workers there.
In short order, diplomats’ phones blared with earthquake alerts.
The White House said in a statement that US President Joe Biden had been briefed on the earthquake and was “in touch with federal, state, and local officials as we learn more”.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul posted on X that the quake was felt throughout the state.
“My team is assessing impacts and any damage that may have occurred, and we will update the public throughout the day,” Hochul said.
Meanwhile, in another update on social media, the X account for the Empire State Building posted: “I AM FINE.”
Philadelphia police asked people not to call 911 about seismic activity unless they were reporting an emergency.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said state officials were monitoring the situation.
A spokesperson for Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont was unaware of any reports of damage in that state.
‘I noticed the door trembling’
Attorney Finn Dusenbery was in a law office in midtown Manhattan when the quake hit.
“The building shook and I thought that the ceiling above me was going to collapse,” Dusenbery said.
“I did think that maybe the building was going to fall down for a second, and I wanted to get out of the building when I felt that.”
Solomon Byron was sitting on a park bench in Manhattan’s East Village.
“I felt this vibration, and I was just like, where is that vibration coming from,” Byron said.
“There’s no trains nowhere close by here or anything like that.” Byron said he didn’t realise there had been an earthquake until he got the alert on his mobile.
Coastal highway crumbles into the ocean below in California
In an apartment house in Manhattan’s East Village, a resident from more earthquake-prone California calmed nervous neighbours.
At a coffee shop in lower Manhattan, customers buzzed over the unexpected earthquake, which rattled dishware and shook the concrete counter.
“I noticed the door trembling on its frame,” said India Hays, a barista. “I thought surely there couldn’t be an earthquake here.”
Flights to the New York Kennedy, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Newark airports were being held, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
The air traffic control tower at Newark Liberty airport was being evacuated, a controller said in a radio transmission after the earthquake, meaning flights were being held while controllers moved to an alternate location.
“Nobody’s going to go anywhere for the time being,” a controller said over the radio frequency.
The runways were in the process of being inspected for damage. Shortly after the earthquake, controllers at LaGuardia were still clearing flights for departure there.
Amtrak said it was inspecting its tracks and had speed restrictions in place throughout the busy Northeast Corridor.
New Jersey Transit posted on X that its train system was subject to delays caused by bridge inspections.
The Philadelphia area’s PATCO rail line suspended service out of what it said was “an abundance of caution.”
Unusual but not unheard of
The shaking stirred memories of the August 23, 2011, earthquake that jolted tens of millions of people from Georgia to Canada.
Registering magnitude 5.8, it was the strongest quake to hit the East Coast since World War II. The epicentre was in Virginia.
That earthquake left cracks in the Washington Monument, spurred the evacuation of the White House and Capitol and rattled New Yorkers three weeks before the 10th anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks.
Earthquakes are less common on this side of the US because the East Coast does not lie on a boundary of tectonic plates. But East Coast quakes can still pack a punch — its rocks are better at spreading earthquake energy across far distances.
“If we had the same magnitude quake in California, it probably wouldn’t be felt nearly as far away,” USGS geophysicist Paul Caruso said.
