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An earthquake shook the densely populated New York City metropolitan area, the US Geological Survey said, with residents across the Northeast reporting rumbling in a region where people are unaccustomed to feeling the ground move.
The agency said the quake occurred about 10.23am on Friday (1.23am Saturday AEDT), with a preliminary magnitude of 4.8, centred near Lebanon, New Jersey, about 72km west of New York City and 80km north of Philadelphia.
It was the third largest earthquake recorded in the area in the last 50 years, the USGS said, with their figures indicating the quake might have been felt by more than 42 million people.
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People in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Connecticut, Washington, DC and other areas of the Northeast reported shaking. Tremors lasting for several seconds were felt over 322kms away, near the Massachusetts-New Hampshire border.
In midtown Manhattan, traffic grew louder as motorists blared their horns on shuddering streets. Some Brooklyn residents heard a boom and their building shaking.
Long after the quake subsided, residents were startled anew by loud emergency alerts on their mobile phones.
The light quake was shallow, just below the surface at five kilometre depth, which made it easier for residents in affected areas to feel the shaking.
The New York Police Department said there were no damages or injuries reported.
As of noon (3am AEDT), New York City had no indications of major safety or infrastructure problems from the earthquake, said Mayor Eric Adams, who said he didn't feel the quake himself.
"New Yorkers should go about their normal day," New York Mayor Eric Adams said at a news briefing later on Friday.
The New York City Fire Department said the department received reports of shaking buildings about 10.30am (1.30am Saturday AEDT).
"We are responding to calls and evaluating structural stability," the department said in a statement. "There are no major incidents at this time."
City Buildings Commissioner James Oddo said officials would watch out for any delayed cracks or other effects on the Big Apple's 1.1 million buildings.
There is a low likelihood of aftershocks, New York City Emergency Management Commissioner Zachary Iscol said.
At UN headquarters in New York, the shaking interrupted the chief executive of Save The Children, Janti Soeripto, as she briefed an emergency Security Council session on the threat of famine in Gaza and the Israeli drone strikes that killed aid workers there.
In short order, diplomats' phones blared with earthquake alerts.
On Friday, President Joe Biden said he had had spoken to New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy about the earthquake. The White House said the administration would provide help if needed to state and local officials.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul posted on X that the quake was felt throughout the state.
https://twitter.com/GovKathyHochul/status/1776257181454676383?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
"My team is assessing impacts and any damage that may have occurred, and we will update the public throughout the day," Hochul said.
Meanwhile, in another update on social media, the X account for the Empire State Building posted: "I AM FINE."
Philadelphia police asked people not to call 911 about seismic activity unless they were reporting an emergency.
https://twitter.com/EmpireStateBldg/status/1776254633599480130?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said state officials were monitoring the situation.
A spokesperson for Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont was unaware of any reports of damage in that state.
'I noticed the door trembling'
In some parts of the New York City area, startled residents spilled out from tenements and row houses onto the sidewalks in front of their buildings in the minutes after the shaking stopped.
Attorney Finn Dusenbery was in a law office in midtown Manhattan when the quake hit.
"The building shook and I thought that the ceiling above me was going to collapse," Dusenbery said.
"I did think that maybe the building was going to fall down for a second, and I wanted to get out of the building when I felt that."
Solomon Byron was sitting on a park bench in Manhattan's East Village.
"I felt this vibration, and I was just like, where is that vibration coming from," Byron said.
"There's no trains nowhere close by here or anything like that." Byron said he didn't realise there had been an earthquake until he got the alert on his mobile.
In an apartment house in Manhattan's East Village, a resident from more earthquake-prone California calmed nervous neighbours.
At a coffee shop in lower Manhattan, customers buzzed over the unexpected earthquake, which rattled dishware and shook the concrete counter.
"I noticed the door trembling on its frame," said India Hays, a barista. "I thought surely there couldn't be an earthquake here."
Transport delays
The earthquake slowed travel along the East Coast, with some flights diverted and traffic snarled on roads and rails for runway, bridge, and tunnel inspections.
Flights to the Newark, New York and Baltimore airports were held at their origins for a time while officials inspected runways for cracks.
At least five flights en-route to Newark were diverted and landed at Lehigh Valley International Airport in Allentown, Pennsylvania, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware.
The air traffic control tower at Newark Liberty airport was being evacuated, a controller said in a radio transmission after the earthquake, meaning flights were being held while controllers moved to an alternate location.
"Nobody's going to go anywhere for the time being," a controller said over the radio frequency.
The runways were in the process of being inspected for damage.
At noon the FAA reported a ground stop remained in effect at Newark, and the controllers were relocating back to the tower.
Amtrak reported train service was being slowed due to the earthquake.
"As of 11.05am ET, due to the 4.8 earthquake in New Jersey, Amtrak has initiated its track inspection protocol. Speed restrictions have been implemented throughout the Northeast until all inspections are completed," Amtrak posted on social media.
NJ Transit said system-wide service was subject to up to 20-minute delays in both directions due to bridge inspections after the earthquake.
The Philadelphia area's PATCO rail line suspended service out of what it said was "an abundance of caution."
Unusual but not unheard of
The shaking stirred memories of the August 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 epicentre 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 September 11 terror attacks.
Earthquakes are less common on this side of the US because the East Coast does not lie on a boundary of tectonic plates. But East Coast quakes can still pack a punch — its rocks are better at spreading earthquake energy across far distances.
"If we had the same magnitude quake in California, it probably wouldn't be felt nearly as far away," USGS geophysicist Paul Caruso said.
