On the morning of April 5, 2024, residents of densely-populated New York City reported that they felt the ground rumbling. The U.S Geological Survey, or USGS, later discovered a 4.8 magnitude earthquake had struck the Metropolitan area, shaking buildings and surprising inhabitants of the area, which rarely experiences seismic activity. The quake’s epicenter was in central New Jersey, about 40 miles west of NYC. It occurred just after 10:20 AM EST at a depth of 2.9 miles. Over a dozen aftershocks were reported in the ensuing hours, including one at 5:59 PM with a magnitude of 4.0. 

The New York Fire Department reported no major damages or injuries. However, city dwellers were shocked and a little shaken up by the unexpected event, during which people sitting at desks or at home in high rises felt their whole building shake mildly for several seconds. The UN Security Council was meeting at its headquarters in New York to discuss the situation in Gaza when the earthquake hit. Cameras began shuddering and it forced them to abruptly pause. Camille Lewis was at a cafe in NYC when she felt the shaking. “I haven’t been in an earthquake in New York and honestly, I was scared that something was happening. I’m glad that the building I was in held up and honestly, I’m just glad that everybody is safe,” she said. Lewis went on: “I was like, ‘Do I need to get under a table?’ Everybody was looking around, wondering what was going on. It lasted for a while. Definitely weird.” The movement passed, but people were left jittery about aftershocks, and they busily checked in with friends and family, briefly overloading cellphone networks, city authorities reported.

"This is one of the largest earthquakes on the East Coast in the last decade," New York Governor Kathy Hochul said at a news conference. The tremor was felt to varying degrees across New England, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, including Baltimore, where Joe Biden was expected later that week to tour the damage of the major bridge that had collapsed previously. It stirred up memories of the 2011 earthquake in Virginia that jolted tens of millions of people from Georgia to Canada. Registering a magnitude of 5.8, it was the strongest quake to hit the East Coast since World War II. That earthquake left cracks in the Washington Monument and spurred the evacuation of the White House and the Capitol. According to the USGS, earthquakes in the Eastern U.S. are felt across a far broader area because the bedrock is much older and harder, transferring seismic energy more easily. By contrast, the rocks in the Western U.S. are younger and contain more faults that absorb earthquake energy. 

Though these events are rare on the East Coast, it is important to know what to do in the event of one. Quakes affect so many different regions, bringing together communities and emphasizing the importance of solving issues collectively. 

Information retrieved from thegaurdian.com.