Earthquake Hits East Coast

Filed under: News |

(Huntington, NY 8/23/11 -2:03 pm)   An earthquake registering 5.8 on the Richter scale hit the east coast today at 1:51pm. The epicenter was reported 85 miles SW of Washington D.C.  The earthquake was 3.7 miles deep.  A large shock wave was felt in Huntington, NY.  Aftershocks are possible over the next few hours.

There were evacuations of buildings as a precaution. While it is unusual for us to feel earthquakes it is not a rare event. New York used to have much more frequent earthquakes in the past. There are know faults in this area.

Here is a map of historic earthquakes in our area greater than or equal to a  magnitude 3:

In the top figure, closed red circles indicate 1924-2006 epicenters and open black circles indicate locations of the larger earthquakes that occurred in 1737, 1783 and 1884. Green lines indicate the trace of the Ramapo fault.

A USGS website with more information is here

A USGS earthquake intensity map is here.

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