4.8 magnitude New Jersey earthquake felt across the Philly region; ‘no significant issues’ in city, officials say

Derrick Pitts’s first thought — “that was a mighty big truck” that just rumbled past his house — likely coincided with that of millions of other people in the Philadelphia and New York regions at 10:23 a.m. Friday.

But he quickly surmised this was different, “a low frequency vibration.” Pitts, a trained geologist who also is the Franklin Institute’s chief astronomer, knew he had just experienced a shelf-shaking earthquake.

The U.S. Geological Survey has measured 11 aftershocks in the aftermath of the earthquake centered in north-central New Jersey, including one that registered a 4 on the Richter scale around 6 p.m.

Ten minor aftershocks occurred within about three hours of the original quake, detected at occurred at 10:23 a.m. and was a 4.8 on the Richter scale, according to the USGS data.

Where were you when Philadelphia experienced the Great (light) Earthquake of 2024?

No, really — a 4.8-magnitude quake centered near Tewksbury, N.J., shook the Philly region Friday morning, with tremors rippling as far up and down the eastern seaboard as Baltimore and Boston.

Earthquakes in this region are hard to predict. According to the U.S. Geological Survey , earthquakes occur deeper than our current mapping of the fault line system, so it can be hard to link the two. The nearest major fault to the epicenter is the Ramapo fault line which runs from southeastern New York to Southeastern Pennsylvania.

For more on where it happened, how far it was felt, and whether it’s happened before – read our visual explainer.

» READ MORE: A visual guide to the earthquake felt in the Philly region

Justin Allen was mid-vasectomy on an operating table Friday morning when the room began to shake.

“At first, I sort of assumed it was a train or something,” he wrote to an Inquirer reporter. “But then the surgeon said something along the lines of, ‘That’s an earthquake, right?’”

The U.S. Geological Survey reported several minor aftershocks following the Friday morning earthquake in north-central New Jersey.

The impacts would have been negligible and likely not felt by most people. The strongest registered just a 2.2 on the Richter scale, well below any damage level. They were centered a short distance from the original quake, at Whitehouse Station.

The earthquake rattled walls at the Garden State Youth Correctional Facility in Chesterfield in Burlington County.

As a precaution, the facility was placed in lockdown. Officers were making security inspections inside the inside and perimeter of the sprawling complex. The checks were expected to take several hours and visits were temporarily halted.

"We have no reports of road or bridge closures due to the earthquake at this time," PennDot spokesperson Brad Rudolph said.

The agency says work on the I-95 Conrail bridge is continuing, and it anticipates a reopening this weekend.

At the Philadelphia Zoo, the macaws screamed, the gibbons called, the caiman dove into the pond, and the lemurs refused to go outside as an earthquake shook the region Friday morning.

But, “for the most part, it seems that it was pretty uneventful,” said Samantha Nestor, assistant curator of carnivores and ungulates.

Mayor Cherelle L. Parker commended the leaders of Philadelphia agencies who coordinated responding to Friday morning's 4.8-magnitude earthquake, which rattled the city's residents but left no injuries or property damage in its wake.

"It's important that you know, we are all working and coordinating together, that we are sharing information, and making sure that Philadelphia and Philadelphians are safe," Parker said during a Friday afternoon news conference.

H. Patrick Clancy, president and CEO of the local workforce board Philadelphia Works, was on the 13th floor of One Penn Center, just above Suburban Station in Center City, at the time of the earthquake.

"I did not feel a thing," he said.

After the earthquake, a small aftershock occurred that registered a 2 on the Richter scale, said David R. Wunsch, director and state geologist for the Delaware Geological Survey.

He said it emanated from an area within a mile of the original quake.

While earthquakes aren’t as common on the East Coast, they still happen. The most recent event similar to today’s was a 4.1 magnitude earthquake in Delaware in 2017. Before that, Virginia experienced a 5.8 magnitude quake in 2011.

For context, California records up to 20 earthquakes per year with a magnitude greater than 4.0, per the USGS.

Philadelphia International Airport is open and operational, according to Christine Ottow, a spokesperson for PHL.

There was a brief stoppage of arriving and departing flights at the airport immediately after the earthquake in order to inspect runways and taxiways, said Ottow via email. Out of precaution, teams at the airport are inspecting buildings and structures.

Post-earthquake, the Philadelphia School District is fanning its operations engineers across the city to inspect the district’s 216 schools and other buildings, said Monique Braxton, district spokesperson.

“So far, there’s been no damage reported, no injuries reported,” Braxton said.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy told ABC News that the state experienced minimal damage following the 4.8 magnitude earthquake in Northern New Jersey and warned that residents they should be prepared for aftershocks in the near future.

“So far, so good,” Murphy said in the interview with ABC.

Earthquakes can be part of a sequence. People should expect additional earthquakes, called aftershocks, following an earthquake, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Aftershocks can take place hours, days, or months later.

If you feel an aftershock, drop down to the floor, take cover under a table, and hold on to it.

U.S. Geological Survey officials said that after the quake occurred around 10:25 a.m. EDT, the agency logged more than 100,000 reports from people who had experienced the shakes.

For USGS, this was just another day at the office, since 4.8 magnitude earthquakes are common occurrences.

When the earthquake hit Friday morning, "I thought they were doing construction," said Barrie Franklin, a resident of the Laurel, Philadelphia's city's tallest residential building.

A look out of her apartment, on the 28th floor at 1911 Walnut St., seemed to solidify that belief when she saw workers jackhammering in front of the neighboring church. Two minutes later, she got a text on her family chat: "Did you feel that earthquake?" Soon, alerts from The Inquirer and other outlets poured in.

While reports of the tremor rattling windows and shaking homes spread quickly throughout Delaware County, no major damage or injuries were called in to first responders, according to County Director of Emergency Services Tim Boyce.

Boyce said that, as a precaution, county officials reached out Friday to Energy Transfer Partners and Colonial Pipeline, operators of pipelines carrying natural gas liquids from Western Pennsylvania to a terminal in Marcus Hook. No anomalies in their systems were reported, Boyce said.

Tremors were felt throughout eastern Pennsylvania and most of New Jersey and from Delaware and Maryland to central Massachusetts, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The heaviest concentrations of tremors were reported in the New York and Philly metropolitan regions.

Most Philadelphia-area hospitals said operations had not been disrupted and that there was no apparent damage caused by Friday morning’s earthquake.

Staff at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in Kensington were conducting a “full inspection of all facilities” but had so far found no damage, spokesperson Paul Healy said. Patient care had not been interrupted, he added, and so far no one had come to the emergency department with injuries related to the quake.

Though rumbles were felt from Boston to Philadelphia, the town of Lebanon, N.J., was the center of Friday's earthquake chaos.

James Pittinger, Lebanon's mayor, phoned in to speak with MSNBC's Ana Cabrera, saying he was "shaken up" located just several miles from the epicenter of the quake.

Earthquake magnitudes are measured on the Richter scale, with values ranging from 1 – you won’t feel a thing – to the cosmically destructive “extreme” level of 9 and above.

Each order of magnitude represents a 10-fold increase in power. Thus, an earthquake measuring a 4.0 would be 10 times stronger than a 3.0.

Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency has not been notified of damages or injuries related to the earthquake, according to agency spokesperson Ruth Miller.

“We remain in close contact with county emergency management personnel and will be ready to respond in the event state assistance is necessary,” Miller added.

“Earthquake? Nah. We didn’t feel anything,” said Jonathan Torres.

Of course, he was part of a work crew from AmeriDrill using a tamper, a pneumatic, jackhammer-like machine, to smoothe asphalt to cover a drilling hole at the Lukoil gas station at Rising Sun and Adams Avenues in the city’s Crescentville section.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said the state activated its emergency operations center, following a 4.7 magnitude earthquake that occurred in Northern New Jersey in Hunterdon County.

Murphy also advised that no one should call 911 unless they have an actual emergency.

SEPTA reported no injuries to customers or employees in the earthquake and its crews are continuing to inspect bridges, tunnels, tracks and power systems to check for damage, the agency said.

No damage was discovered in initial checks and SEPTA has not suspended service, spokesperson Andrew Busch said. There also are no delays attributable to the tremors, he said.

The city Department of Public Property has conducted preliminary inspections of public facilities and found no damages, said Joe Grace, a spokesperson for Mayor Cherelle L. Parker.

Additionally, the Philadelphia International Airport has reopened all runways after finding no damage in initial inspections, Grace said.

Quakes east of the Rocky Mountains can shake the ground over far greater distances than quakes of similar magnitude in the West, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

One recent example was the dish-rattling 5.8 magnitude earthquake centered in Mineral, Va., in July 2011, that was experienced by people up to 600 miles from the epicenter, as far away as southeastern Canada.

A number of area school districts are reporting that students are safe, and their school days are proceeding on normal schedules.

In Upper Darby, "our students, staff, and buildings are safe and secure following the reported earthquake we just felt," Superintendent Dan McGarry told the community in a message.

The region is not particularly earthquake prone, compared to areas of the world closer to the boundaries between tectonic plates — the nearest to Philadelphia is in the Caribbean.

According to United States Geological Survey records, there have been about 12 other earthquakes with a magnitude greater than 2.5 on the Richter scale over the past 20 years within 80 miles of Philadelphia – roughly the distance between the city and the recent epicenter in Plainfield. Two of those past quakes occurred nearby the New Jersey town.

As so many other people, Derrick Pitts said he “started to feel this low-frequency vibration,” and thought, “whoa, that’s a very big truck.”

As a geologist, who also is the Franklin Institute’s chief astronomer, Pitts said he soon realized that the sensation could have resulted only from an earthquake — in this case not a particularly significant one, but one experienced in one of the nation’s densest population corridors.

A ReadyPhiladelphia text from the city's Office of Emergency Management to residents shortly after the event said it was aware of and monitoring the "possible earthquake."

"If you feel shaking, protect yourself, drop on your hands and knees, hold on to something sturdy like a table or desk, and cover your head and neck with your arms," read the statement.

"Obviously, a lot of us felt it," said James O'Malley, a spokesperson for Bucks County.

"In our 911 center, if they didn't feel it themselves personally, they would have felt it when the surge of calls came in from people asking whether or not we've had an earthquake," O'Malley said.

On the second floor of City Hall, near the mayor's office, the earthquake wasn't felt.

The announcement on the PA system a couple minutes after it struck was the first some heard of it. "Don't run out of the building," occupants were advised, and no evacuation was being called.

The tremors was felt at the National Weather Service Office in Mount Holly, which quickly was besieged with calls, said meteorologist Alex Dodd.

He said the quake was felt from Baltimore to Boston, but “we haven’t had any reports of real damage.”

Following the New Jersey earthquake that rattled much of the Northeast, PATCO suspended service to check its system Friday morning, “out of an abundance of caution.”

NJ Transit bus service would cross-honor PATCO tickets during this time, the agency said on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said 4.8 magnitude earthquake that hit New Jersey was “felt in parts of Pennsylvania.”

Shapiro said his office is working with the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency and will stay in contact with counties about any damage.

The quake evidently was a 4.8 on the Richter scale.

The earthquake was centered near Tewksbury in northern New Jersey, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, with a preliminary rating of 4.8 on the Richter scale, said the Franklin Institute’s Derrick Pitts,