Earthquake Centered Near New York City Rattles The Northeast

NEW YORK (AP) — An earthquake shook the densely populated New York City metropolitan area Friday morning, with residents across the Northeast reporting rumbling in a region unaccustomed to it.

The U.S. Geological Survey reported a quake at 10:23 a.m. with a preliminary magnitude of 4.8, centered near Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, or about 45 miles west of New York City and 50 miles north of Philadelphia. The agency’s figures indicated that the quake might have been felt by more than 42 million people.

People from Baltimore to the Massachusetts-New Hampshire border reported feeling the ground shake. While there were no immediate reports of serious damage, officials were checking bridges and other major infrastructure, Amtrak slowed trains throughout the busy Northeast Corridor, and a Philadelphia-area commuter rail line suspended service out of what it said was “an abundance of caution.”

“Pretty weird and scary,” Shawn Clark said after feeling the quake in his 26th-floor midtown Manhattan office. Clark, an attorney, initially feared an explosion or construction accident.

His colleague Finn Dusenbery worried the ceiling or even the building would collapse.

“I wanted to get out of the building when I felt that,” Dusenbery said.

In midtown Manhattan, traffic grew louder as motorists blared their horns on shuddering streets. Some Brooklyn residents heard a boom and felt their building shaking. Cellphone circuits were overloaded for a time as people tried to reach loved ones and figure out what was going on.

At U.N. 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