A rare earthquake rattled parts of New Jersey and New York several minutes ago, causing buildings to sway in cities, towns, streets and beaches across the region. The earthquake was also felt in Virginia and Washington, D.C., according to television news reports. There were no immediate reports of any injuries or structural damage, but the quake rattled nerves. The U.S. Geological Survey is reporting that a magnitude 5.9 earthquake hit at 1:51 p.m., EST. The epicenter was northwest of Richmond, Va., about halfway to Charlottesville. The Associated Press is reporting the quake was felt in Washington, New York City and North Carolina. USGS Geophysicist Julie Dutton said an earthquake of this magnitude is rare for the East Coast but that the effects are felt widely in our region because quakes move more easily through the bedrock. “It is definitely unusual to have a magnitude 5.9 earthquake in Virginia,” Dutton said. The East Coast quake followed a 5.3 magnitude shaker in Colorado, but Dutton said the two events most likely are not related.
Residents lined Broad Street immediately after the shaking stopped, most of them still trying to figure out what happened, few aware they had been struck by the aftershock of a 5.9 quake in Virginia.
City hall employees fled the building as soon as their offices started to tremble.
David Rodriguez said he turned to coworker Jesus Casiano as soon as their cubicles started rocking inside the city clerk’s office.
“I asked if he felt it, and he said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘Let’s get out of here,'” Rodriguez said.
Another woman in the clerk’s office who declined to give her name, said employees started racing out of the building “on instinct.”
“The cubicles were shaking and rocking. The plants were shaking and rocking,” she said. “We all looked at each other and started running out.”
in Essex County, Newark City Hall was the only municipal building that conducted an evacuation due to the earthquake, according to Sheriff Armando Fontoura.
Around New Jersey
In South Brunswick, police Sgt. James Ryan said the shaking brought staff out of their offices and immediately jammed the township’s emergency lines.
“The 911 line is flooding with calls right now,” Ryan said at 2 p.m. “People want to know what happened. They want to know if there was an explosion.”
The quake was felt in the offices of Alcatel-Lucent in Murray Hill, Union County.
Liza Ottesen, who works as a manager there, said her whole desk area started “swaying.”
“Everything started to sway very slightly, gently back and forth. It was very odd; I’m in the middle of a large building and nothing sways back and forth,” she said. “I stood up and looked around to see if anyone else had noticed the same thing, and everybody was doing what I was doing.”
She said there was no damage, but described the feeling as “strange.”
“It was a swaying that is not supposed to happen to a building,” she said.
In New Brunswick, county employees in the four-story Middlesex County Administration building were evacuated, according to county administrator John Pulomena.
The quake was felt in the Middlesex County Courthouse, but, although most of the people inside left the five-story building, there was no official evacuation ordered, according to the county Sheriff’s Department.
At Bergen Community College in Paramus, ESL professor Heidi Lieb was among faculty members putting in summer office hours when the quake struck.
“They’re doing construction on the building, so people probably chalked it up to that. But I have never felt a shake like that,” said Lieb. “Everybody’s coming out of their office to see what was going on, and nobody knows what to do.”
“We don’t have any earthquake training,” she said. “Earthquakes, tornadoes. We just are not prepared for these kinds of things.”
At Newark Liberty International Airport, TSA screener Stacy Bodtmann was gathered with other employees of the Transportation Security Administration in a briefing room before going out on duty.
“The whole table was shaking, the whole room was shaking, I said ‘Holy cow!’ Everybody said ‘What is that?’ I said, ‘Holy cow!’ ”
Bodtman was not immediately aware of any security concerns at the airport resulting from the tremor.
New York City Hall and the federal courthouse was evacuated.
Down the Shore
On a packed 26th Street beach in Avalon, the tremors forced people upright in their beach chairs, looking quizzically at each other for 10 seconds until the shaking stopped.
“Do you feel that?” people shouted to each other.
Dozens of beachgoers reached for mobile phones, which quickly overloaded the capacity and prevented most calls from going through.
News of the Virginia earthquake was quickly confirmed and spread down the beach as an Army helicopter swooped up the coast at low altitude.
Previous Earthquakes
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