News story on New Jersey quake

Small earthquakes in N.J. prompt calls to police, but no reported damages

By Alexi Friedman/The Star-Ledger

February 21, 2010, 8:05PM

SOMERSET COUNTY -- Two small earthquakes rattled northern New Jersey today, prompting scores of phone calls to police but no reported damage, authorities said.

The shocks began just before 9 a.m., when a 2.6-magnitude temblor struck in Gladstone, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. A smaller 2.3 magnitude quake, most likely an aftershock, hit the same area around 12:30 p.m.

Residents more than 30 miles from the epicenter reported feeling the earthquake, according to the geological agency. About 100 people in Bernardsville called police, said Sgt. John Remian, after a loud rumble was followed by what sounded like a boom.

"It was felt by everybody here," Remian said from police headquarters. "It felt like the whole room was shaking around us, and a loud explosion afterward."

Remian said the area, which sits on the Ramapo Fault, experienced a 1.5-magnitude earthquake in January. Though there has been no reported damage from today's earthquake, Remian said, "this was more substantial than the last one."

The county’s Office of Emergency Management was notified, he said, and Bernardsville police sent out an advisory through the town’s e-mail and text-messaging system.

According to an interactive online poll conducted by the USGS, most people near the epicenter reported "weak" shaking and no damage.

Paul Caruso, a geophysicist with the agency, said there was nothing unusual about the frequency of the earthquakes in the area.

"It’s pretty normal," he said. "We often see little earthquakes there."

The state rarely sees earthquakes with a high magnitude, Caruso said. The biggest one in the last decade — a 3.8 quake — struck in 2003 around 10 miles east of Phillipsburg.

Clifford Lisman said he felt today's quake and investigated, thinking a tree had fallen on his Bernardsville home.

"I went running through the house to make sure everything was okay," he said.
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Staff writer Rohan Mascarenhas contributed to this report. 

(This article made me wonder why most paragraphs had only one sentence.)