2023-05-19 13:56:00
(CNN) — A magnitude 2.2 quake was felt in parts of New York and New Jersey early Friday morning, the USGS told CNN.
The quake occurred at 2:00 am northwest of Yonkers and along the Hudson River in New York, and was felt in New Jersey, according to Randy Baldwin, a geophysicist at the USGS National Information Center in Golden, Colorado.
The USGS received 200 alerts on its website from people who sensed the movement, most of which were reported within a 25km radius of the epicenter, Baldwin said.
“It’s pretty common, you might have several quakes a month, a handful of quakes in random places,” Baldwin said.
The Yonkers Fire Commissioner’s office confirmed that while the dispatch received a few calls, it was largely because of noise, with one caller about a suspected burnt transformer. Personnel were dispatched to the area but no injuries were found, the spokesman for the Yonkers Fire Department confirmed. There were no calls in Hastings-on-Hudson, Hastings Fire Secretary Jean Schnibbe told CNN.
The quake, which Baldwin said lasted only a brief moment, was probably only felt by residents because they spent the night there, Baldwin said. Most of the earthquakes in the Northeast are minor, according to the official, adding that the largest quake in the last three months was a magnitude 3.8 in Buffalo, New York, on February 6.
“You probably won’t see damage until it hits the magnitude 4 range,” Baldwin said. “The Buffalo quake was in the metropolitan area, and if there was damage there, it would be something that fell out of a refrigerator.”
Earthquakes in the northeastern US are hard to predict because of their size and can happen randomly, Baldwin said. It is rare for them to occur in densely populated areas in the northeast region, he said.
“You can go a few weeks without seeing any, and then a few weeks you might see earthquakes,” he said. “Fault lines are usually not identified, they are underground and they just happen.”
In the past six months, the USGS has identified about 100 “mostly small” earthquakes in the northeastern US, Baldwin said. These extend into Canada, through Quebec and into the Nova Scotia area, Baldwin said.
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