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Following a seismic event on a Friday morning in the Northeast, emergency management officials in New York City swiftly mobilized to assess any potential damage, as reported by Jackie Bray, commissioner of the New York State Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services.
According to Bray, under the state’s emergency operations plan, city and state structural engineers were promptly dispatched to inspect bridges, tunnels, and other critical infrastructure.
Nuclear plants were also mandated to report any damage within a 15-minute window. Fortunately, no significant damage was found during the inspections.
Despite the fortunate outcome, experts emphasize the importance of using such events as learning opportunities.
Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, stressed the need to consider how to handle more severe scenarios.
Schlegelmilch noted that earthquakes are not as prioritized on the East Coast compared to more seismically active areas like the West Coast or countries like Japan.
While plans and preparations are in place, coastal storms and extreme weather events are typically more top of mind due to their higher frequency.
The earthquake, with its epicenter near Lebanon, N.J., caught the region off guard. Bray remarked, “It’s not like a blizzard in Buffalo, right, that you know you’re going to have each year.
An earthquake is unexpected in New York.” Nonetheless, the state and city have implemented specific measures, including building codes that mandate new or significantly renovated buildings to adhere to appropriate seismic standards.
While New York City and other urban areas in the Northeast generally follow the latest seismic building standards, these codes are not universal.
Various state and local jurisdictions determine which standards to adopt for their communities, according to Emily Guglielmo, chair of the American Society of Civil Engineers' seismic committee.
Guglielmo explained that seismic building standards are not tied to earthquake magnitude but rather to "probabilities of collapse," which vary based on regional earthquake-risk criteria.
She noted that jurisdictions with larger cities are often more capable of accommodating code changes than smaller ones.
Paul Segall, a geophysics professor at Stanford University, pointed out that earthquakes on the East Coast, though less frequent and smaller than those on the West Coast, are often felt over a wider area.
This is due to the colder, less absorbent rock beneath the Earth's surface on the East Coast compared to the warmer rock out West.
Segall highlighted the 5.8-magnitude Mineral Springs earthquake that struck Virginia in 2011, which was felt by more people than any other earthquake in U.S. history.
While today's earthquake caused minimal harm, Segall cautioned against ruling out the possibility of a larger quake in the future.
Unlike California, where some jurisdictions require older homes and buildings to be retrofitted to modern seismic standards, New York's building codes generally do not mandate retrofitting. Most of the city’s buildings were constructed before 1995 when the codes were adopted.
Bray emphasized the importance of weighing risks, noting that these events are rare and that Friday’s earthquake had minimal impacts on infrastructure.
Guglielmo echoed this sentiment, reassuring the public that the infrastructure performance indicates they should feel safe in their communities.