Earthquake rattles New York and New Jersey, but does little damage

4.8 MAGNITUDE

Residents look on as municipal officials inspect damage to three condemned buildings in Newark, N.J., following the earthquake on Friday. The 4.8 magnitude temblor shook buildings across the New York City region.. STEPHANIE KEITH — THE NEW YORK TIMES

A man is interviewed by a television news crew in New York’s Times Square about the earthquake on Friday morning, which shook buildings in the New York City region. JEENAH MOON — THE NEW YORK TIMES

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By Thomas Fuller

The New York Times

At a general store in New Jersey, near the epicenter of the earthquake, the sound was so loud that the staff thought a truck had crashed into the building.

Five miles away, at some riding stables, the ground shook so forcefully that it sent three horses galloping around the ring.

Within hours, a custom T-shirt shop in Manhattan already was selling a souvenir: a shirt emblazoned with “I Survived The NYC Earthquake, April 5th, 2024.”

For most of the millions of people who felt the magnitude 4.8 earthquake that sent tremors from Philadelphia to Boston on Friday morning, it was a harmless novelty in a part of the country unaccustomed to seismic shaking.

But the rattling shook buildings in New York City and drove startled residents into the streets.

Officials in New York said they had been in touch with counties as well as nuclear facilities across the state, with no reports of damage aside from a gas leak in Rockland County. “Fortunately here in the state of New York, we are masters of disasters,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said. “We know how to handle this.”

Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey, who is out of the state at a conference, said in a televised interview that reports of structural damage were “de minimis.”

Based on data from the U.S. Geological Survey, the earthquake, with an epicenter in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, about 40 miles west of New York City, was the third strongest within 250 miles of the city since 1950.

Even as sirens could be heard across New York, the Police Department, Fire Department and Con Edison said they had no immediate reports of damage. Mayor Eric Adams, who was attending a gun violence prevention meeting at Gracie Mansion, said he did not even feel the earthquake and was informed of it by his staff members.

“New Yorkers should go about their normal day,” he said at a midday news conference.

But the earthquake also revealed apparent shortcomings in New York’s emergency notification system, coming after the Adams administration has been criticized for a delayed response to floods and wildfire smoke. Friday, beeping text alerts warning residents to stay indoors were received a half-hour or more after the earthquake hit. (In earthquake-prone areas like California and Japan, a network of seismic sensors detect shaking, so alerts can arrive seconds before the quake.)

Zach Iscol, New York City’s commissioner of emergency management, defended the city’s alerts, saying officials had to confirm with the USGS that the shaking was in fact caused by an earthquake. The alerts were sent out in 14 languages.

By the standards of the biggest earthquakes that can cause mass devastation, Friday’s shaking was very minor. The magnitude 6.7 earthquake that struck the Northridge in 1994, causing billions of dollars in damage and killing 57 people, was more than 700 times as strong as the temblor in the Northeast on Friday.

At its epicenter in New Jersey, Friday’s quake produced shaking of about V on the Mercalli Intensity Scale, an average of the intensity of shaking reported by people who felt it. The scale uses Roman numerals. Damage to buildings typically begins to occur at around VII on the scale, according to Ron Hamburger, one of the country’s leading structural engineers who specializes in seismic safety. Friday’s earthquake, he said, “would have been a nonevent in California.”

But around New York and New Jersey, the suddenness of the shaking and unfamiliarity with earthquakes left many people startled.

In Whitehouse Station, Valorie Brennan heard a rumbling that sounded like a train before she felt any shaking.

“I thought my furnace exploded,” she said. “My dogs went running to the back of the house to hide.”

At the riding stables, in Califon, New Jersey, pictures of show jumping horses fell off the tack room walls and shattered, as the riders dismounted and tried to soothe their trembling horses while aftershocks rumbled beneath their hoofs.

In the Marble Hill neighborhood of Manhattan, Ada Carrasco was washing dishes in her third-floor apartment when the shaking started.

“I felt it, but at first, I thought to myself, ‘Am I getting lightheaded?’ But then the shaking continued and I ran out the door,” she said in Spanish.

“I’ve never experienced this in my life,” said Kristina Feeley, who works behind the counter at the Oldwick General Store in New Jersey. The earthquake did not cause damage but reverberated for 30 seconds throughout the shop. Everyone froze, Feeley said, and it was several minutes before the floor felt steady enough to move across.