Achi news desk-
NEW YORK –
An earthquake centered between New York and Philadelphia shook air conditioning and suburbs across the northeastern United States for several seconds on Friday morning, causing no major damage but startling millions of people in an area unaccustomed to such tremors. .
The US Geological Survey reported an earthquake at 10:23 am with a preliminary magnitude of 4.8, centered near Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, or about 45 miles (72 kilometers) west of New York City and 50 miles (80 kilometer) north of Philadelphia. The agency’s figures indicated that over 42 million people may have felt the rumour.
People from Baltimore to the border between Massachusetts and New Hampshire reported feeling the tremors. While there were no immediate reports of serious damage, officials were checking bridges and other major infrastructure, Amtrak slowed trains throughout the busy Northeast Corridor, and the Philadelphia-area commuter rail line suspended service out of what it said was “sufficient of warning “
Pictures and decorative plates fell off the wall at Christiann Thompson’s house in Whitehouse Station, she said. Thompson was volunteering at the local library when the earthquake struck, leaving few effects, but she got a report from her husband on the location of the home.
“The dogs lost their minds and got really scared and ran around,” he said.
Whitehouse Station Fire Chief Tim Apgar said no injuries were reported, but responders did answer some calls from people smelling gas. Some stones were cast loose on a historic site, Colonel John Taylor’s Grist Mill, which was built in 1760 and supplied corn to George Washington’s troops during the American Revolution.
In a Manhattan office on the 26th floor, Shawn Clark felt the earthquake and initially feared an explosion or construction accident. It was “quite strange and scary,” the lawyer said.
Earthquakes are less common on the eastern edges than the western edges of the United States because the East Coast does not lie on a tectonic plate boundary. The largest easterly earthquakes usually occur along the mid-Atlantic Ridge, which extends through Iceland and the Atlantic Ocean.
Earthquakes on the East Coast can still pack a punch, as its rocks are better than their western counterparts at spreading earthquake energy across long distances.
“If we had the same magnitude earthquake in California, it probably wouldn’t be felt nearly as far away,” said USGS geophysicist Paul Caruso.
This image provided by the US Geological Survey shows the epicenter of an earthquake on the US East Coast on April 5, 2024.
A magnitude 4.8 earthquake is not large enough to cause damage, except for some minor impacts near the epicenter, the agency posted on the X social platform.
However, Friday’s earthquake caused some disruption.
Flights to New York, Newark and Baltimore airports were grounded for a time while officials inspected runways for cracks. The Seton Hall University men’s basketball team said its flight to Newark was held in Indianapolis, where the team won the National Invitation Tournament on Thursday, and that the flight delay would likely delay a welcome home celebration scheduled for Friday afternoon on Seton Hall’s New Jersey campus. .
At least five flights en route to Newark were diverted and landed at Lehigh Valley International Airport in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where some passengers rented carts to get home.
Traffic through the Holland Tunnel between Jersey City, New Jersey, and lower Manhattan was halted for about 10 minutes for inspections, the Port Authority of New York and Jersey said.
In midtown Manhattan, motorists honked their horns on shaky streets. Some Brooklyn residents heard a boom and felt their building shake. Mobile phone circuits were temporarily overloaded as people tried to reach loved ones and find out what was happening. Later, phones rang with earthquake warnings during the New York Philharmonic’s morning performance, punctuating the finale of Anton Webern’s Six Pieces for Orchestra.
The piece “literally ended with a cellphone alert,” said Adam Crane, the philharmonic’s vice president of external affairs.
A screen shows an emergency alert in the New York City area, Friday, April. 5, 2024, in New York. (AP/Yuki Iwamura)
At UN headquarters in New York, the shaking interrupted Save the Children chief executive Janti Soeripto as she briefed an emergency Security Council session on conditions in Gaza amid the Israel-Hamas war.
In New York City’s Astoria neighborhood, Cassondra Kurtz was giving a 14-year-old Chihuahua a cocoa butter rub for her dry skin. Kurtz was videotaping the moment when his apartment began to shake hard enough that a large mirror audibly slammed against a wall.
Kurtz at first thought he was passing a truck. The video caught her looking around, confused. Chiki, however, was “absolutely painless.”
Pedestrians cross the street in New York on April 5, 2024. An earthquake shook the populous metropolitan area of ​​New York City on Friday morning, the US Geological Survey said, with residents across the Northeast reporting rumblings in a region where people are not used to feeling the ground movement. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)
Friday’s earthquake was felt as far away as Vermont and New Hampshire, where some residents initially mistook it for snow falling off their roofs or plow trucks swinging by.
In Hartford, Connecticut, paralegal Stacy Santa Cruz watched her computer screen shake. But unlike other north-easters, the Peruvian native had been through an earthquake before and recognized the feeling.
Earthquakes near or above magnitude 5 struck near New York City in 1737, 1783 and 1884, the USGS said. And Friday’s stirring memories of the August 23, 2011 earthquake that shook tens of millions of people from Georgia to Canada. Centered in Virginia, the magnitude 5.8 earthquake was the strongest to hit the East Coast since World War II.
President Joe Biden said he spoke with New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy about the earthquake on Friday. The White House said the administration would provide assistance if needed.
New York City had no signs of major safety or infrastructure problems from the quake, said Mayor Eric Adams, who said he did not feel the quake himself. The City’s Buildings Commissioner, James Oddo, said that officers would keep an eye out for any cracks or other effects on the 1.1 million buildings in the Big Apple.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said the quake was felt throughout the state, but officials had no reports of any life-threatening problems.
And even the carefully placed eggs that form part of a sculpture in a Chinatown art gallery remained in place, much to the relief of gallery owner Kristen Thomas
Catalini reported from Whitehouse Station, New Jersey. Associated Press journalists around the country contributed to this report, including Jake Offenhartz, Bobby Caina Calvan and Karen Matthews in New York City, Edith M. Lederer in the United Nations, Seth Borenstein in Washington, Mark Scolforo in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Susan Haigh in Hartford, Connecticut.
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