The Big Wobble
4.8 magnitude quake gives New York a little shake with tiny tremors felt up to 200 miles from epicentre
New Yorkers see their city being hit by natural disasters only in the movies – so when the earth shook under their feet yesterday the initial response was puzzlement rather than terror.
After all, until Friday morning, the idea of an earthquake hitting the Big Apple was generally considered as likely as Godzilla wading up the Hudson River.
Many people – me included – thought a very large lorry was rumbling down their street when, at 10.23am, they heard a booming sound, and their homes and workplaces suddenly started shaking.
It was a 4.8 magnitude earthquake which lasted a few alarming seconds. Its epicentre was in Tewksbury, in central New Jersey, about 50 miles west of New York City. Seismologists said that the quake was 2.9 miles deep, meaning it was felt across much of the north- east of the US, as far afield as Philadelphia, Baltimore and Boston.
earthquakes in New York are unusual, with a 5.8 magnitude quake rattling the city in August 2011 and a 5 magnitude quake in 1884.
High-rise New York is a city where a lot could go wrong if buildings start to wobble, but no major damage was reported. For most residents, the only immediately obvious damage involved books shaken off shelves and pictures off walls.
engineering teams were dispatched to conduct immediate inspections of roads and bridges. 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 cancelled, and New York City public transit continued running.
New York governor Kathy Hochul warned of the likelihood of aftershocks at a news conference. ‘This is one of the largest earthquakes on the east Coast in the last century,’ she said.
But for many New Yorkers it came as a complete surprise to know that there had been any previous tremors ( they have generally been so weak that few people have felt them), or that their region actually sits anywhere near geological fault lines.
earthquakes in the eastern US are infrequent. Since 1950, 40 other earthquakes of magnitude 3 and larger have occurred within 250km of yesterday’s quake. The tremor even disrupted an urgent debate on Gaza at the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan. As cameras began shuddering, Janti Soeripto, the chief executive of Save the Children, stopped speaking during an address to the Security Council.
‘ You’re making the ground shake,’ joked Palestinian UN envoy Riyad Mansour.
The quake also rattled the Fox News studio, as the Stuart Varney show was live on air.
New York City mayor eric Adams said no injuries had been reported. As New Yorkers hurriedly looked up what to do if another quake occurred, Mr Adams urged residents to take cover under any heavy furniture. ‘New Yorkers should go about their normal day,’ he urged.
But, of course, everyone’s normal day was suspended as they discussed the quake, with local radio stations taking phone calls from listeners describing how it had been for them.
Inevitably, most people in a region that has never experienced a devastating quake were quick to see the funny side – as did the management of the empire State Building, which posted a message on the skyscraper’s page on X after feeling the faintest of shudders, simply saying: ‘I am fine.’
One Manhattan resident complained to her radio station that as ‘emergency alert’ text messages from the city urged people to stay indoors, New York police had sneakily taken the opportunity to go down her street and ticket all illegally parked cars.
‘Largest on East Coast in a century’