It struck in Bruce Springsteen territory, and immediately sent folks to social media, asking ‘what was that?”
By Frank Brill, EnviroPolitics Editor
I felt it. I was at home in Bucks County Pa. a bit southwest of Trenton, NJ, working at my computer and I heard something that sounded like a far-distant thunderclap and then rolling thunder. It lasted a bit longer than a storm event. I think that was an earthquake, I said to myself, and noted the time: 2 a.m.
Sure enough. The news this morning confirmed that a minor 3.1 earthquake had shaken the ground east of Freehold, NJ where New Jersey singer-songwriter legend Bruce Springsteen grew up before making the nearby shore town of Asbury Park famous worldwide.
The National Weather Service’s Mount Holly office tweeted that the small earthquake was felt “in much of central New Jersey.”
New Jerseyans in Freehold and beyond posted about the late-night earthquake on social media, checking to see if everyone else felt the same shaking. The rattling woke up some locals who had gone to sleep, while others were startled by the event as they were getting ready to turn in for the night. Some people received earthquake alerts on their phones.
New Yorkers said they felt the Jersey event on Staten Island and in Queens.
Twitter, which has become the unofficial source of public reaction to such events quickly chimed in.
Not to abandon the news event to social media, the New York Times today reported:
Fernando Bravo, who runs Tony’s Freehold Grill, said he woke up at his Freehold house at 1:57 a.m. and went to the kitchen for water. “I heard noises outside,” he said. “When I checked out the window I did not see anything, but after a minute I heard a big noise.”
He said it sounded like “something big dropped” or crunched “like wood is broken.” He checked on his daughters, who told him it was an earthquake.
When he arrived at the grill at about 6:30 a.m., he noticed the security camera had picked up a little tremble inside his office. A few customers, dropping by for their morning coffee, also said they felt it, said Jacklyn Bravo, his daughter and a waitress at the diner.
Sheriff Shaun Golden, speaking to a reporter for WNBC, said that there were no reports of immediate damage but that full assessments would be conducted early on Wednesday. “Just a lot of nerves,” he said.
Workers in the county’s operations center felt tremors like “jet engines for a few seconds flying overhead,” he said, followed by a “little rattle.” Then the department was deluged by 911 calls from concerned residents Sheriff Golden said.
An earthquake measured at 3.0 is large for the metropolitan New York region. In 2009, an earthquake of that strength hit northern New Jersey, with its epicenter in Morris County, about 35 miles west of Midtown Manhattan.
The largest in the state was a 4.8 magnitude near Trenton in 1938, said Robert Sanders, a geophysicist at the National Earthquake Information Center.
How about you? Did you feel it? Use our comment block to explain where were you and what it sounded like
