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.
The agency reported a quake with a preliminary magnitude of 4.8, centered near Lebanon, New Jersey.
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.
The fire department of New York said on Friday there were no initial reports of damage.
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.
The shaking stirred memories of the 23 August 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 the second world war. The epicenter 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.
Meanwhile on Friday, the official social media account of the Empire State Building reassured its fans:
I AM FINE
— Empire State Building (@EmpireStateBldg) April 5, 2024
More details soon …
