2012 New York City earthquake

The 2012 New York City earthquake was a 6.3 earthquake that occurred at 11:09 AM on August 16, 2012, causing over $17 billion in damage, and killing over twenty-one thousand.

Precursor events
About three days before the earthquake, many passengers riding the IRT Broadway-Seventh Avenue Line noticed that the trestle bridge over which it passed between 122nd and 135th Streets had begun to show vertical movement of over one foot. A fire hydrant near the 125th Street-7th Avenue intersection exploded into the air the next day (August 14), and a fissure had begun to develop, which within three hours had run the entire length of the street, from the Harlem River to the Hudson, necessitating the closure of the entire street by the NYPD for 24 hours until the USGS had examined the area. The subway in the area was also closed down for even longer, due to flooding in the tunnels from the fissure breaching the Harlem and Hudson Rivers. The next day, the fissure widened by a foot, necessitating an evacuation of the island from 116th to 135th Street.

Also of note was almost one year earlier, on August 23 2011, a 5.9 earthquake struck the east coast in central Virginia, 88 miles from Washington, DC - though this was determined to be unrelated to the NYC quake, and to be more related to separate activity in the Chesapeake region.