East Coast homeowners from Philadelphia to Boston are shaken after a magnitude-4.8 earthquake
The Newark, New Jersey, area was rattled by a magnitude-4.8 earthquake on Friday morning, April 5, 2024, at 10:23 a.m. Eastern Time, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS). Over 167,000 people responded on the “Did you feel it?” registry for USGS. Obviously rare, this ranks as the third-largest recorded earthquake in New Jersey’s history and the most significant in nearly 250 years, as per a 2018 earthquake mitigation report.
Residents of Baltimore, Philadelphia, Connecticut, and various other regions in the Northeast experienced tremors. Reports of shaking extended over a distance of 200 miles, reaching as far as the Massachusetts-New Hampshire border. The tremors persisted for several seconds, indicating the earthquake’s significant reach across the region.
Reports from this Earthquake
A homeowner in Yardville, New Jersey states:
“I was indoors working on the computer. The house was quiet. I first felt the floor begin to vibrate and then get worse. I could actually see the interior walls move and shake. There was really loud rumbling like nose at first. The noise stopped and then started up again and got louder. At first I thought there was a bad accident, or a huge tree had fallen, or they were doing drills at the military base. When the noise and the movement continued and got worse, I realized it was an earthquake. The dog was spooked. It lasted for approximately one minute.”
A homeowner in New York said:
“OMG I have literally NEVER felt ANYTHING LIKE THIS EVER BEFORE. I have complete goosebumps I have lived in NY my entire life, born and raised and I have NEVER!! I live on a 2nd story condominium type building and my house gets pretty loud from huge windy gusty days but NEVER EVER literally SHOOK MY ENTIRE BUILDING. It was like my entire building was doing a pretty fast shimmy(ing) type action/movement. I really don’t know how else to describe other than undeniable – ok something is totally wrong here, completely stop what you are doing, I don’t care how focused you are and try to mentally compute – cause I had no idea what else could be going on based on everything I was feeling. It was as if with each directional shimmy like the building was literally lightly but quickly see-sawing, wow, like just wow.”
Did you know that your homeowner insurance policy does not cover earthquake damage?
Given the risk, now is the time to consider how earthquake insurance will provide the protection you don’t get from your homeowners insurance policy:
- According to a recent three-year data sample, an average of five earthquakes with magnitudes between 5.0 and 6.0 occur yearly in California.
- The probability of an earthquake measuring magnitude 6.7 in the next 30 years is 60% in the Los Angeles area and 72% in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Your home equity continues to grow while the risk of a devastating earthquake increases, too. Are you prepared to lose all of your hard-earned equity in an instant? And if you experience a total loss, can you afford to rebuild? Now (not afterward) is the right time to consider your Earthquake Insurance options.
Why Choose GeoVera?
GeoVera is the premier stand-alone provider of residential earthquake insurance. GeoVera provides innovative insurance solutions in catastrophe-exposed areas and is the longest-tenured provider of residential earthquake insurance.
GeoVera uses a strategic and agile approach to developing impactful and reliable products to keep pace with the rise in natural disasters.
GeoVera has decades of experience managing claims for nature’s worst catastrophes and a financial rating of “A” (Excellent) by A.M. Best Company. We hope you’ll never need our help, but we’re ready if you do. Ask your insurance agent for a quote today.