New Yorkers keep their cool after rare earthquake: ‘Definitely weird’

The earthquake that struck the New York metropolitan area and the surrounding region on Friday morning left some New Yorkers shaken by the rare event but many others were unfazed – or even failed to notice it happened at all.

Related: ‘I really wasn’t worried’: US man was getting vasectomy as earthquake struck

The quake struck at around 10.23am ET, according to the US Geological Survey. Centered in Hunterdon county, New Jersey, at a magnitude of 4.8, the earthquake’s tremors were felt across the tri-state area including New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Residents in Massachusetts and Maryland also reported feeling shaking.

In New York, the city’s famously hardboiled residents reported a wide range of feelings to a phenomenon far more often associated with more quake-prone parts of the country such as California.

“I was sitting in bed and all of a sudden I felt the building start shaking and at first I thought, ‘This is really strong wind’ because I just never think of an earthquake happening here,” Emily Glover said, adding, “I just didn’t even think to consider it was an earthquake until I looked it up if anybody else had felt shaking.”

Like Glover, Sebastian D’Agosta also thought the tremors were a result of heavy winds, saying: “I really thought it was the wind, I’ll be honest. I know it sounds silly … but it was my first time with something like that … It was just kind of like the building shaking, it wasn’t too concerning. It was really fast.”

“Someone sent it to the group chat and it was kind of like an explosion of, ‘Was that what we thought it was?’… It was cool though, I didn’t really mind. Hopefully nothing is damaged, hopefully nobody is hurt,” he added.

Julien Blanchet was at a building near Columbia University when the earthquake struck.

“I didn’t really feel it and then we got messages that other people in the building felt it and obviously a lot of people felt it but I didn’t notice it myself. Given that it had already passed, after I found out, I was just like, ‘Oh that’s interesting,’” she said.

She added: “I felt safe personally but … I heard about the earthquake over in Taiwan which was much much worse, I’m sure,” Blanchet said, referring to the large earthquake that struck Taiwan’s east coast earlier this week, killing at least a dozen people and injuring more than 900 others.

Camille Lewis was at a cafe when she felt the shaking.

“I haven’t been in an earthquake in New York and honestly I was scared that something was happening. I’m glad that the building I was in held up and honestly, I’m just glad that everybody is safe,” she said.

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.”

Harper Gaddy, 57, of Union City, New Jersey, just over the river from Manhattan, said she first felt shaking from the earthquake as she was making her morning coffee. Gaddy said her neighbors appeared to be spooked by the intense shaking. From her window, Gaddy said she saw people “walking down the street, making the sign of the cross”.

Thankfully, nothing in Gaddy’s home was broken. Her plants are “doing okay”, she added.

Gaddy said that Friday’s earthquake would not impact the rest of her plans for the day: “We’re New Yorkers. We go on with our day.

“We got shit to do,” she added.