A relaxing Friday morning turned chaotic for customers in a Morris County coffee shop as they fled tremors from the 4.8 magnitude earthquake that rocked New Jersey and neighboring states.
A 32-second clip of security video footage from Boonton Coffee Co. in Boonton shows some customers quickly exiting the shop once the earthquake started, while others seemed unconcerned.
A man working on his laptop quickly grabbed his phone off the table and jogged out the door at the sound of the first thud and shake. Others followed.
“Was that an earthquake?” one person said. “Was there an earthquake?”
“Am I going to die?” a scared young girl asked. “I don’t want to die,” she continued, raising her voice.
She and another young girl hugged a woman and exited the shop.
“Earthquake! Why is there an earthquake here?” the girl said, calling for her mother.
Nina Perez, an assistant manager at Boonton Coffee Co., said she and other people inside the shop didn’t initially register they were experiencing an earthquake.
“It felt more like an explosion,” she told NJ Advance Media. “We did not know what was going on. It sounded like something blew off and it was like rumbling, really, really loud.”
Shaking followed the initial boom, she said. She tried to scope out what had caused the sound and shaking, thinking it was possibly a car accident, but she realized it was an earthquake once she saw other people coming off of Main Street.
The two young girls inside the shop were “super freaked out,” but their moms did a good job of calming them down and consoling them, Perez said.
“Everybody came back in,” she said, after the shaking subsided. Although some customers never left the store, including one who was undisturbed while ordering throughout the quake.
“One of our employees actually did not even leave the register,” Perez said. “He continued to take somebody’s order while the whole place was shaking.”
The epicenter of the earthquake was about seven kilometers, or 4.3 miles, north of the Whitehouse Station section of Readington Township in Hunterdon County, officials said.
The quake could be felt in New York City, Delaware, Connecticut and other parts of the East Coast. U.S. Geological Survey figures indicated the quake might have been felt by more than 42 million people.
“We have activated our State Emergency Operations Center. Please do not call 911 unless you have an actual emergency,” Gov. Phil Murphy said on social media around 10:50 a.m.
People in different regions of New Jersey said they felt their houses shaking for about 10 seconds, with windows rattling and rooms swaying.
Staff writers Anthony G. Attrino and Len Melisurgo contributed to this report.
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Brianna Kudisch may be reached at bkudisch@njadvancemedia.com.
