A rare 4.8 magnitude earthquake struck very close to New York on Friday, causing many neighborhoods in the megacity to shake slightly for a few seconds and notably interrupting a UN Security Council meeting on Gaza.
The earthquake occurred “at 10:23 a.m. local time 7 km northeast of Whitehouse Station, New Jersey”, the border state of New York on the other bank of the Hudson River, indicated the American Institute of Geophysics (USGS).
The earthquake occurred at a depth of 5 km, according to the USGS.
No significant damage or injuries were immediately reported.
The slight tremor was felt in many neighborhoods in the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn, causing a deluge of messages on social media platforms.
Dominika Uniejewska, a store manager in Lebanon, New Jersey, the epicenter of the earthquake, “was asleep and was woken up.”
“At first, I didn’t understand what was happening because I have never experienced such a strong earthquake,” she told AFP by telephone.
“The whole house really shook, the bed shook, the house was making noise, very loud,” she testified.
President Joe Biden remains informed, according to his spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre and “the White House is in contact with federal and local officials”.
” I’M DOING WELL “
“I’M OKAY”, reassured on X (former Twitter), with a touch of humor, the official account of the emblematic skyscraper of the Empire State Building.
New Yorkers posted photos of overturned lawn chairs with a tongue-in-cheek message: “We will rebuild.”
But authorities urged caution. “We have no information at this stage relating to significant damage (but) we continue to assess the situation,” wrote on X the spokesperson for New York Mayor Eric Adams, Fabien Levy.
“In the event of an aftershock, get on the ground, protect your head and neck, under furniture, near a wall or a door threshold,” warned the spokesperson, a message reiterated by New York State Governor Kathy Hochul.
At United Nations headquarters, cameras filming the Security Council meeting on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza began to shake.
The representative of the NGO Save the Children, Janti Soeripto, interrupted her speech describing the famine and the deaths. “Is it an earthquake? ”, she asked.
The meeting was interrupted a second time when everyone’s phones started ringing and vibrating due to automatic emergency alerts sent by the municipality.
These messages recommend that New Yorkers “stay” home and call 911 “if they are injured.”
The United States Civil Aviation Administration (FAA) has warned that airports in the northeastern United States may experience difficulties following the earthquake, mentioning those in New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia and Baltimore . But JFK Airport in New York reported on X that it remained “open and operational” and that “planes are taking off and landing at this time.”
“Earthquakes are rare, but not impossible along the Atlantic coast, a region called by geologists “passive aggressive margin” to describe this area where the Atlantic plate and that of North America meet,” according to the USGS.