An earthquake in New Jersey on Friday morning was felt throughout the Northeast, including Connecticut, leading to a brief pause in outgoing flights at Bradley International Airport, some slowdowns in train travel and cautionary inspections of bridges throughout the state.
At a news briefing Friday afternoon, Connecticut officials said that the State Emergency Operations Center was partially activated following what the U.S. Geological Survey said was a 4.8 magnitude earthquake reported at 10:23 a.m. in the area of Lebanon, New Jersey.
The USGS on Friday said it received reports from residents across most of Connecticut who felt the earthquake, and dense reports of rumblings from Virginia up the coast and into Maine and Canada. Some scattered reports went as far south as Florida, according to the geological survey.
According to the USGS, aftershocks can be felt hours, days or even weeks after the initial quake and can cause building damage and falling debris.
Hartford, where residents reported feeling rumblings, is about 170 miles away from where the earthquake was reported, according to Google Maps.
At the news briefing in the State Emergency Operations Center in Hartford, officials said they had not received any reports of significant damage in Connecticut as of the early afternoon hours but that they were still investigating.
“We’re here to assist any city or town that needs assistance,” said Brenda Bergeron, deputy commissioner with the Connecticut Division of Emergency Management and Homeland Security.
Bergeron added that, as of the early Friday afternoon, state officials had not received requests from any towns or cities for assistance.
Bergeron also said utility companies in the state were surveying their lines Friday to “make sure they’re still intact” and had not found any issues.
Crews with the state Department of Administrative Services surveyed state buildings after the rumblings were felt and had not found any significant damage, according to Bergeron.
Bergeron also said the Connecticut Department of Transportation conducted visual inspections of bridges “in an abundance of caution” and that train services in the state, including Amtrak and the Metro-North Railroad, experienced some slowdowns while crews inspected the tracks. Train service did continue throughout Friday.
According to Bergeron, Bradley International Airport was “in a bit of a pause for a little while” while an inspection was done to make sure the facility was OK and later resumed its operations as normal.
“We’re monitoring,” Bergeron said. “We are not seeing any significant damage, but we are in partial activation and continuing to work with our state, local, federal and private sector partners on making sure everyone is safe and sound.”
According to Ari Perez, associate professor of civil engineering at Quinnipiac University, the earthquake Friday was something this area of the country only experiences once every 50 to 100 years.
Perez said most buildings in the area of the earthquake were likely able to withstand the rumblings without any serious structural damage, adding that things like cracked drywall and other aesthetic damages were much more likely.
According to Perez, earthquakes below 3 on the Richter scale are not generally felt, but those that get up to 6 or 6.5 can result in “really large structural damage.” He noted that the scale is logarithmic and not as simple as most scales dealing with numbers from 1 to 10.
“So a magnitude 2 earthquake is 10 times stronger than a magnitude 1, and a magnitude 3 is 100 times stronger than a magnitude 1 and so on and so on,” Perez said.
For residents in Connecticut, Perez said there were likely a “range of experiences.” Those who were in buildings a few stories off the ground were much more likely to feel the rumblings than those on the ground level, he said.
Residents of the Nutmeg State may have felt their desk or something similar shaking, but were unlikely to feel anything strong enough to cause a panic, Perez believes.
Once the earthquake occurred in New Jersey, Perez said residents in Connecticut would not immediately feel its effects but that it would not take any longer than “seconds” for them to be felt, as the wave of rumblings travels “very quickly.”
The Associated Press reported residents all over the Eastern Seaboard felt rumbling.
The Fire Department of New York said there were no initial reports of damage, according to the AP.
A 1.7 magnitude earthquake that hit New York City on Jan. 2 caused a series of small explosions on Roosevelt Island between Manhattan and Queens.
In midtown Manhattan, the usual cacophony of traffic grew louder as motorists blared their horns on momentarily shuddering streets. Some Brooklyn residents heard a booming sound and their building shaking. In an apartment house in Manhattan’s East Village, a resident from more earthquake-prone California calmed nervous neighbors.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul posted on X that the quake was felt throughout the state. “My team is assessing impacts and any damage that may have occurred, and we will update the public throughout the day,” Hochul said.
The shaking stirred memories of the Aug. 23, 2011, earthquake that jolted tens of millions of people from Georgia to Canada. Registering magnitude 5.8, it was the strongest quake to hit the East Coast since World War II. The epicenter was in Virginia.
That earthquake left cracks in the Washington Monument, spurred the evacuation of the White House and Capitol and rattled New Yorkers three weeks before the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
