An earthquake shakes the New York area

A rare 4.8-magnitude earthquake followed by an aftershock struck very close to New York on Friday, causing the city to shake slightly for a few seconds without causing any injuries or major damage but interrupting a UN Security Council meeting on Gaza.

“I'm still fine,” he wrote humorously on his account. ).

The US Geological Survey announced in the morning that an earthquake — very rare on the East Coast compared to California — occurred at 10:23 a.m. local time near the town of Whitehouse Station, in New Jersey, a few dozen kilometers from New York.

Immediately, the Empire State Building on X assured him: “I'm fine.”

By midday, President Joe Biden wanted to reassure: “Things are back to normal. »

But this brief shock – the last serious shock on record dates back to 1884 – was felt in Manhattan and Brooklyn, leading to a general mobilization of the US media and a deluge of messages and images – often humorous – on social media.

“Shudder”

“I'm nervous, I'm shaking. Oh my God […] This has never happened here […] “A lot of people are afraid,” Brooklyn resident Ana Villagran, 62, said in an interview with Agence France-Presse.

“At first she didn't understand what was happening,” said Dominika Unijewska, a store manager in Lebanon, New Jersey.

“I have never witnessed such a strong earthquake,” she told AFP by phone. “Her whole house really shook, the bed shook, the house was making noise, really loud,” she testified.

Mary White, by contrast, a 70-year-old retiree from Brooklyn, was not “afraid.”

I told myself: What has to happen, will happen […] “We cannot stop nature.”

For Victoria Suarez and Hunter Garrison, two tourists in their 30s from Texas, “it wasn't a big shock, just a little shock.”

“I survived”

New Yorkers posted photos of upside-down lawn chairs with the sarcastic message: “We will rebuild.” Others suggested a T-shirt with the slogan “I Survived the NYC Earthquake.”

But authorities urged caution in a city that has witnessed a number of attacks, including September 11, and natural and health disasters.

“In the event of a response, New Yorkers should remain alert and follow usual precautions even if the likelihood of aftershocks is low,” New York Mayor Eric Adams wrote on X, while New York State Governor Kathy Hochul noted. [il fallait] Lie on the floor, protecting your head and neck, under furniture, near a wall or doorstep.

” earthquake ? “

At United Nations headquarters, cameras filming a Security Council session on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza began to shake.

The representative of the non-governmental organization Save the Children, Janti Soeripto, interrupted her speech denouncing the famine and deaths in Gaza.

“Is it an earthquake?” she asked.

The meeting was interrupted for a second time when everyone's phones started ringing and vibrating due to emergency alerts sent by the municipality.

On the transportation front, the US Civil Aviation Agency (FAA) was quick to warn of difficulties at airports in the northeast of the country, and then things returned almost to normal despite some delays at JFK and Newark airports.

“Earthquakes are rare, but not impossible along the Atlantic coast, an area geologists call the ‘passive aggressive margin’ to describe this area where the Atlantic plate and the North American plate meet,” according to the USGS.

Kenneth Miller, a geologist at Rutgers University, reassured that “an earthquake of magnitude 4.7 or 4.8 is enough to shake the walls a little, but in general it does not cause any serious damage.”

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