A rare earthquake rattles the New York region

A rare earthquake rattled the New York metropolitan area on Friday morning, shaking buildings from Manhattan to the suburbs and startling millions of residents in a region where noticeable seismic activity is highly unusual.

The magnitude 4.8 quake was centred in New Jersey, about 70 kilometres west of the city, and was felt across a wide swath of the Northeast. Though moderate by the standards of earthquake-prone regions, it was among the strongest to strike the area in generations, and the sudden shaking caught many off guard.

Buildings swayed, windows rattled and office workers and residents felt the ground move for several seconds. There were no reports of serious damage or injuries, but the quake prompted brief precautionary inspections of bridges, buildings and infrastructure, and a number of aftershocks followed in the days afterward.

For a population far more accustomed to storms and floods than to earthquakes, the event was a novel and disconcerting experience, and it quickly became the talk of the city, generating a flood of reactions online.

Seismologists noted that while earthquakes are far less frequent in the East than on the West Coast, they are not unheard of, and the region sits atop ancient faults. The quake served as an unexpected reminder that even New York is not entirely immune to the movements of the earth beneath it.