Photo: John Angelillo/UPI/Shutterstock
This morning, New Yorkers across the city felt their buildings shaking. The first reaction was disbelief. Then came denial. But it was confirmed by the U.S. Geological Survey: At 10:23 a.m., a 4.8-magnitude earthquake originating in Lebanon, New Jersey, had indeed occurred. It was felt as far as Philadelphia and Boston. The effects of the quake are still being assessed.
The mayor says the Department of Buildings is still doing inspections but hasn’t found any major structural problems in the city yet. (Newark fared worse with four houses pushed together “like dominoes,” according to one report.)
In the end, the quake’s legacy in the city might have been less physical than emotional, a collective event we will find ourselves reminiscing about for years. And at least a couple of stores are already capitalizing on that feeling:
Plus a more permanent way to mark the day:
Photo: Chris Crowley
The U.N. Security Council was in the middle of meeting about an extremely serious issue — the plight of children in Gaza — when, as the president of Save the Children was speaking, the room shook; aides, ambassadors, and officials looked at one another. Then an official cracked a joke: “Madam Secretary, you’re making the earth shake.”
Across the city, New Yorkers doing slightly less impactful things were also thrown off by the quake:
But some might think Justin Allen had it the worst: He was in the middle of a vasectomy when he felt what seemed like a “train passing by,” he told The Guardian. The doctor put his tools down. Then they both started laughing. In a response to his tweet about the moment, written in caps lock, his wife shared a picture of Allen safe outside the clinic and called it a “sign.”
Other New Yorkers found the quake’s timing so awkward they chose not to acknowledge it at all:
The “new” Yankee Stadium, inaugurated in 2009 after the end of its predecessor’s 85-year run, famously lacks charm and personality. The stadium was designed to accommodate luxury patrons: The box seats behind home plate and the dugouts are too expensive to regularly sell out; the drunken “bleacher creatures” can no longer yell at or throw things towards opposing right fielders with ease, since pricier seats were installed in front of them, buffering them from the field. The point is, only an earthquake could get this stadium to shake the way the old Stadium used to. A couple hours before today’s home opener against the Blue Jays, which is taking place on time, it did. Briefly.
The earthquake was the biggest in 140 years, but they’re actually more common than our hysterical reaction today suggests. Astoria saw a smaller, 1.7-magnitude quake earlier this year, and little shocks pop up all the time — there was even a 0.8-magnitude quake centered in Gramercy Park in 2004. Researchers at Columbia University count 18 bigger quakes going back to 1737, including the 2011 quake that toppled a chimney in Red Hook and had workers running out of midtown towers in shock. Huge Ma, or Vax Daddy, the engineer who set up an actually efficient system for finding vaccine appointments early in the pandemic, pointed this out:
The rattle of the earthquake encouraged officials to stop traffic through the Holland Tunnel (which is now open but with lots of delays) and halted or delayed take-offs at JFK, Newark, and La Guardia. Meanwhile, rail traffic got even slower, as Amtrak said trains in the Northeast will travel slow and steady until every inch of track gets inspected.
The subway authorities are still saying the system is okay — though with 665 miles of track, it’s unclear how they figured that out so fast:
Let’s look at the facts, shall we? We just experienced an earthquake. On Monday, there will be an eclipse. Plus, up to a trillion cicadas are about to enter the country. Or maybe it’s just an extra-chaotic Mercury retrograde. You decide!
Or just read our colleague Sarah Jones on what exactly is happening here.
While New Yorkers shared stories of frames falling off walls and tiles breaking, a spokesman says New York’s schools seem to be fine. NYC Housing directed anyone whose building was affected to the Office of Emergency Management.
But the building that most people outside the city associate with disasters — at least those big Hollywood disasters involving King Kong and the Ghostbusters — assured the public that it hasn’t been affected:
Among the many delays caused by the earthquake was one prompted not by the quake itself but by its alerts. The New York Philharmonic had to put off the beginning of an 11 a.m. performance, the New York Times reported, due to the late emergency alerts beeping through the hall. At 11:46, another alert — warning of aftershocks — ripped through the crowd.
Scruffier performers worked through it. A host at Who Weekly, a podcast that covers the news and non-news of B-, C-, and D-list celebrities, reported that they were at their microphones when they felt the shake. So they kept recording.
In the moments after the quake, New Yorkers jumped on their phones and started texting and tweeting about it. But the official alert from the city came what felt like a lifetime later, and Councilmember Shaun Abreu noticed the delay.
The council was already stirred up by the lack of notifications for major floods this fall and the wildfire smoke that forecasters saw coming last year, but it didn’t lead to the cancellation of city events — or even the cancellation of a Yankees game.
The subways are okay!
No injuries reported yet, either.
But very sorry to this person’s driveway.
Yes, that was an earthquake in New York City (and New Jersey, where its epicenter was). The U.S. Geological Survey reported it was a 4.8-magnitude quake that occurred sometime after 10:20 a.m. But a lot of New Yorkers initially thought it was something much more mundane: construction. Is this how we’ll sleep through the next big one? Thinking it’s the condo project going up next door?
This is a breaking story, please check back for updates.
