(Headline USA) An earthquake shook the densely populated New York City metropolitan area Friday morning, with residents across the Northeast reporting rumbling in a region unaccustomed to it.
The U.S. Geological Survey reported a quake at 10:23 a.m. with a preliminary magnitude of 4.8, centered 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 quake 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 and other major infrastructure, Amtrak slowed trains throughout the busy Northeast Corridor, and a Philadelphia-area commuter rail line suspended service out of what it said was “an abundance of caution.”
“Pretty weird and scary,” Shawn Clark said after feeling the quake in his 26th-floor midtown Manhattan office. Clark, an attorney, initially feared 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,” 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. Cellphone circuits were overloaded for a time as people tried to reach loved ones and figure out what was going on.
In the aftermath of a major quake in Taiwan, some wondered if the two events might be nefariously connected.
A few referenced an online meme that saw plus-size flautist Lizzo—who last week performed at a Radio City Music Hall fundraiser for President Joe Biden featuring former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama—twerking in front of the Taiwanese tremors.
What is Lizzo doing in Taiwan? pic.twitter.com/88yZHef45Y
— Lauren3ve (@Lauren3veMemes) April 3, 2024
“Hmmm, first a 7.5 magnitude earthquake hits Taiwan a couple of days ago, and now a 4.8-magnitude earthquake affected up to 4 to 5 states with New Jersey being epicenter… Even parts of Upstate NY have been affected,” wrote Twitter user @RagingKuJo1222. “WOW😳 LIZZO really gets around.”
On a more serious note, however, the seismic events raised questions as to whether China might be trying to send a message given the country’s past exploration of weather-related warfare and other weaponry reliant on things such as electromagnetic pulses.
If so, it could signal the possibility of more soft-terrorism attacks ahead, with tensions in Sino–American relations continuing to simmer, even as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen visits the country to address the ongoing trade imbalance.
“They’re not focused just on political and military targets,” warned FBI Director Christopher Wray during a January hearing before the House China Committee.
“We can see from where they position themselves across civilian infrastructure that low blows aren’t just a possibility,” Wray added. “The amount of conflict low blows against civilians are part of China’s plan.”
Despite President Joe Biden’s close financial ties with the Chinese government—which may have included the sharing of classified documents contained in the Penn Biden Center’s D.C. office space and in his Wilmington, Del., garage—online theories sprung up recently that the Democrat officials might even try to use Chinese election interference as they did Russian interference in the past several election cycles in an attempt to link presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump to the CCP.
Already, outlets like the New York Times and CNN have attempted the bizarre spin operation to make excuses for Biden’s expected loss in the November election.
And former Obama/Biden flunkie Susan Rice—who resigned her White House post just in time to avoid serious Hatch Act violations—was conveniently trotted out to suggest that Trump posed a national-security threat, even though Russian President Vladimir Putin recently endorsed Biden.
NEW NARRATIVE – TRUMP IS NATIONAL SECURITY RISK: Susan Rice (@AmbassadorRice) warns Americans against voting for Donald Trump because he's a national security risk: "Trump clearly doesn't put American interests ahead of his own, so we're deeply vulnerable to exploitation by our… pic.twitter.com/3MjM9zrJ4a
— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) March 21, 2024
At U.N. headquarters in New York, the shaking of Friday’s quake 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?” 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 neighborhood, Cassondra Kurtz was giving her 14-year-old Chihuahua, Chiki, a cocoa-butter rubdown for her dry skin. Kurtz was recording the moment on video, as an everyday memory of the dog’s older years, when her apartment started shaking hard enough that a large mirror banged audibly against a wall.
Kurtz assumed at first it was a big truck going by. The video captured her looking around, perplexed. Chiki, however, “was completely unbothered.”
Earthquakes are less common on the eastern than western edges of the U.S. because the East Coast does not lie on a boundary of tectonic plates. The biggest Eastern quakes usually occur along the mid-Atlantic 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.
A 4.8-magnitude quake isn’t large enough to cause damage, except for some minor effects near the epicenter, the agency tweeted.
Earthquakes with magnitudes near or above 5 struck near New York City in 1737, 1783 and 1884, the USGS said. And Friday’s stirred memories of the Aug. 23, 2011, earthquake that jolted tens of millions of people from Georgia to Canada. With an epicenter in Virginia, it left cracks in the Washington Monument and rattled New Yorkers ahead of the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Registering magnitude 5.8, it was the strongest earthquake to hit the East Coast since World War II.
On Friday, the White House said in a statement that Biden had been briefed on the earthquake and was “in touch with federal, state, and local officials as we learn more.”
As of noon, New York City had no indications of “major life safety or infrastructure issues from the earthquake,” Mayor Eric Adams tweeted, adding that the city was inspecting critical areas.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul tweeted that the quake was felt throughout the state, but officials had no reports of any life-threatening problems.
Solomon Byron felt it as he sat on a park bench in Manhattan’s East Village.
“I was just like, ‘Where is that vibration coming from?'” Byron recalled. He was especially puzzled since there were no subways running nearby.
But he didn’t realize there had been an earthquake until he got the alert on his cellphone.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
