Earthquake Off Long Island

November 30, 2010, 1:19 pm

Earthquake Off Long Island.


I Felt It. Did You?
By RICHARD PéREZ-PEñA

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The earthquake was centered about 80 miles south-southeast of Southampton and about 125 miles from New York City.At first I felt a slight bouncy sensation, the kind of thing you could easily dismiss. Then it came again, a bit stronger his time, with an audible rattling of my desk and chair, before it petered out. The whole thing lasted maybe five seconds.

At 10:46 a.m., the New York region got its biggest earthquake in 18 years, a magnitude 3.9 jolt south of eastern Long Island. It wasn’t big enough, or near enough, to do any damage, but Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, home to the region’s major seismology lab, fielded calls from people on Long Island and in New Jersey who had felt the shaking.

For me, it was almost a bit of nostalgia. I spent most of my life in the Los Angeles area, and I’ve been in countless “hey, was that an earthquake or are you bobbing you leg?â€