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"It's not a big deal to me because I come from the island of earthquakes, we have one, like, every day," said Mika Nakano, a sophomore visual media arts major and Japan native.
In the same amount of time it takes to send a tweet, tap a CharlieCard, or down a shot of espresso, Emerson students felt trembles from a 4.0 magnitude earthquake Tuesday night.
The aftermath from an earthquake that originated near Waterboro, Maine shook the Boston area and spanned across New England at approximately 7:20 p.m., according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
Some students at Emerson were able to feel a small quiver from the quake.
“I was in my room,” said Samantha Starkey, a freshman writing, literature and publishing major. “I didn’t know what it was, I thought someone was jumping around upstairs.”
Elizabeth Gillis, a sophomore journalism major who was in class on the 10th floor of the Tufte Building at the time, also said she couldn’t tell what the shake was from.
“I thought someone just stomped their feet because it was such a mild movement,” she said.
But other students on campus said they didn’t notice the tremors, like Mika Nakano, saying she only found out by logging into her Facebook page and noticing statuses about the earthquake.
“Its not a big deal to me because I come from the island of earthquakes, we have one, like, every day,” said the sophomore visual media arts major and Japan native.
Shortly after the quake, @lilbuilding, the Twitter account for the Little Building residence hall, tweeted “Turns out this building in [sic] earthquake proof #themoreyouknow.”
According to the USGS, earthquakes in the central and eastern regions of the U.S. can often be felt at a distance 10 times greater than those of a similar magnitude on the West Coast, where they are prone to occur more frequently.
A similar sized quake that occurred on Oct. 10 in Beloeil, Canada, a city just east of Montreal, had a magnitude of 3.9, and some people reported via Twitter that they felt the shakes as far south as Vermont.
The New England area feels small quakes about twice a year. According to USGS, the most severe one was in 1755, when a magnitude 5.8 convulsion struck just off the coast of Cape Ann, northeast of Boston, causing severe damage to Boston’s waterfront.