LANCASTER COUNTY, Pa. — It was a rumble felt across the northeast.
“It seemed to last a good twenty, thirty seconds, it felt like forever,” said Jacquelyn Pillsbury from New Jersey.
Pillsbury and her husband were home at the time of the earthquake before traveling to Lancaster County.
The 4.8 magnitude earthquake rocked people’s routines throughout the county.
“That doesn’t normally happen around here, so it was a little bit incongruous,” said Kate Nyx from downtown Lancaster.
For Ashley Dagget, owner of Brick Heads off Lititz Pike, it was unlike any start to the workday.
“I actually thought that there was somebody working on our roof, and I was almost tempted to go out and look, and I didn’t thank goodness, but it probably went on between 10 and 15 seconds,” Dagget said.
When Dagget and her team opened the store Friday, nothing was amiss on their shelves, that is until they heard their brick stock unexpectedly shuffle.
It was some time before Dagget realized what happened.
“Kind of weird how that works, intuition is kind of a weird thing, but I was like ‘maybe that was an earthquake’ and sure enough a couple hours later I found out it was,” Dagget said.
She isn’t the only one who mistook Friday’s quake for something else.
“I felt this tremor, they were doing some work on my neighbor’s house, so I thought maybe was I feeling a jackhammer or something? I wasn’t super scared about it, but my cat definitely freaked out,” Nyx said.
Likewise, Pillsbury believes her cat felt the tremors before she did.
“My cat, who’s fairly antisocial, jumped up on my lap which is kind of odd, and a couple minutes later it felt like the whole house shook,” Pillsbury said.
Nothing was damaged in Pillsbury’s home.
Anyone who does see severe structural damage to their property or smells natural gas is encouraged to get out quickly and notify their utility company and 911.