No major damage or injuries as earthquake rocks New York
The densely populated New York City metropolitan area was shaken by an earthquake yesterday, with residents across the north east of the US reportingrumblinginaregion unaccustomed to it.
The US Geological Survey reported a quake at 10.23am with a preliminary magnitude of 4.8, centred near Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, or about 45 miles west of New York City and 50 miles north of Philadelphia.
The agency’s figures indicated that the earthquake might have been felt by more than 42 million people.
People from Baltimore to the Massachusetts-new Hampshire border reported feeling the ground shake.
While there were no immediate reports of serious damage, officials were checking bridges andothermajorinfrastructure, Amtrakslowedtrainsthroughout the busy north-east corridor, and a Philadelphia-area commuter rail line suspended services out of what it said was“anabundanceofcaution”.
“Pretty weird and scary,” Shawn Clark said after feeling thequakeinhis26th-floormidtown Manhattan office.
Clark,alawyer,initiallyfeared an explosion or construction accident.
His colleague, Finn Dusenbery, worried the ceiling or even the building would collapse.
“I wanted to get out of the building when I felt that,” Mr Dusenbery said.
In midtown Manhattan, traffic grew louder as motorists blared their horns on shuddering streets.
Some Brooklyn residents heard a boom and felt their building shaking.
Mobile phone circuits were overloaded for a time as people tried to reach loved ones and figure out what was going on.
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.
“Is it an earthquake?” Ms Soeripto wondered aloud, then asked if it was all right to go ahead. She did, but soon diplomats' phones blared with earthquake alerts.
In New York City's Astoria neighbourhood, Cassondra Kurtz was with her dog when her apartment started shaking hard enough that a large mirror banged against a wall.
Ms Kurtz assumed at first it was a big truck going by.
Earthquakes are less common on the eastern than western edges of the US because the East Coast does not lie on a boundary of tectonic plates.
The biggest Eastern quakes usually occur along the midatlantic Ridge, which extends through Iceland and the Atlantic Ocean.
Quakes on the East Coast can still pack a punch, as its rocks are better than their western counterparts 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,” said USGS geophysicist Paul Caruso.
Earthquakes with magnitudes near or above 5.0 struck near New York City in 1737, 1783 and 1884, the USGS said.
If we had the same magnitude quake in California, it wouldn't be felt as far away
Paul Caruso