It looks like the city that never sleeps needs a little agitation to stay awake! Who would've thought that an unexpected earthquake would do the job? Yes, you heard it right, New York City has just experienced an earthquake that came quite as a surprise since it’s extremely rare, but not impossible. The earthquake brought up several concerns on the safety and preventions against these tremors, which many people state that the city lacks.
On April 5th of 2024, an earthquake with the magnitude of 4.8 struck New York City and the rest of the North-East as citizens reported several rumbings and tremors. The earthquake mainly hit Lebanon, New Jersey, which is only one hour away from New York, and the quake ended up spreading up to a 10 mile radius, reaching Connecticut and Massachutets, and it was also possible to feel tremors from 200 miles away from New Hampshire. The earthquake didn’t cause a damaging aftermath as the fire department of New York City reported no calls for emergency, but people were quite shaken up by it since it came as an unexpected surprise.
“Lewis went on: ‘I was like, ‘Do I need to get under a table?’ Everybody was looking around, wondering what was going on. It lasted for a while. Definitely weird.””- Said a citizen in an interview with The Guardian. It was clear that most New Yorkers were lost during a situation like this, which made people question whether the government should create more awareness about it. As I said before, this is extremely rare, which matches with the citizens' reaction to it. They were lost because they probably never experienced an earthquake, especially in New York, before as the last earthquake in NYC occurred in October of 2001 with a magnitude of 2.4, which is extremely low.
Since the shock was insignificantly low, this made a lot of people create jokes about it, and even during it most people would just go on with their lives. Many people agreed that it wasn't strong and there was no need to be concerned about it, including the mayor, Eric Adams, where he said “New Yorkers should go about their normal day”. Although, as mentioned in the article of The Guardian, Kathy Hocul, the governor, disagreed and said it was one of the largest earthquakes to occur in the history of the east coast. She also said “ Everyone should take this seriously”.
Ultimately, the earthquake has caused a mark in New York City but also revealed how unprepared and unaware New Yorkers can be during situations such as this. The aftermath of this event sparked discussion amongst the media and the people on how concerned we actually need to be concerning the citizens behavior and New York's safety for future earthquakes.
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