Canada Earthquake Rattles New York, New Jersey

Ontario-Quebec Border Earthquake

Updated: Wednesday, 23 Jun 2010, 11:05 PM EDT
Published : Wednesday, 23 Jun 2010, 2:16 PM EDT

BY LUKE FUNK

MYFOXNY.COM - An earthquake shook eastern Canada on Wednesday afternoon. It struck at about 1:45 p.m. and was also felt across New York state, even as far south as New York City.

The U.S. Geological Survey says its latest information shows the 30-second-long quake was magnitude-5.0. It was first believed to have a magnitude of 5.5. The epicenter of the quake was actually in Quebec, about 23 miles north of Cumberland, Ontario, on the Ottawa River, the USGS said.

The earthquake occurred near the southern edge of the Western Quebec Seismic Zone, the USGS said. Earthquakes within this zone are mostly small.

The earthquake damaged several buildings.

People from Buffalo to Albany and north to Massena on the St. Lawrence River felt the quake. Shaking buildings were reported across New York and Vermont.

People across New York City also reported feeling shaking. Police in Bergen County, New Jersey said they received reports of buildings shaking.

Michelle Kucsma, who works at the Supreme Court building in Manhattan, says workers there felt shaking and turned to the internet to discover that there had been an earthquake. The city sent out an alert through its emergency notification system saying there was no damage reported.

The Bergen County administration building in Hackensack, N.J., was evacuated just before 2 p.m. after employees reported they felt a tremor. Numerous people in the Hackensack and Englewood areas called police to report earth tremors.

Other states that reported feeling tremors were Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and New Hampshire.

People in the large Western Quebec seismic zone have felt small earthquakes and suffered damage from larger ones for three centuries. The two largest damaging earthquakes occurred in 1935 (magnitude 6.1) at the northwestern end of the seismic zone, and in 1732 (magnitude 6.2) 280 miles away at the southeastern end of the zone where it caused significant damage in Montreal.

http://www.myfoxny.com/dpp/news/ontario-canada-earthquake-20100623