Hackensack reacts to earthquake
Last updated: Friday September 2, 2011, 1:21 AM
MANAGING EDITOR
Hackensack Chronicle
The 5.8-magnitude earthquake that rumbled up and down the East Coast around 2 p.m. on Aug. 23 was a real surprise to people more used to traffic jams than tectonic plate shifts.
Reaction to the quake radiated throughout Hackensack in residents startled by the sudden seismic occurrence.
"I was looking outside on Main Street, and the car out front was rocking back and forth," said Roxxy George, a Hackensack resident who works at a local hair salon. "I thought 'Why is it shaking?' I wondered that maybe a truck had drove by. Then people started coming out of the offices, looking in the sky, looking everywhere."
Crowds did assemble in downtown Hackensack as a result of the quake, including in front of Bergen County Courthouse. On Main Street, feelings about the quake were encapsulated in one word.
"It was weird," said George. "To know it was so far away in Virginia, and feel the effects here, that was crazy. Even my mother felt it in North Carolina. No one knew what it was at the time. Maybe a terrorist attack, you don't know what to think. And thank God it wasn't worse. We don't know what to do around here in an earthquake."
Benito Rivero, the owner of a Main Street restaurant, knew what he needed to do: get back to work.
"I've been in meetings all afternoon," said Rivero. "I'm too busy."
For Nadine Galloway, her busy day at a Hackensack pizzeria was interrupted by what she described as an almost nautical experience.
"I felt the stairs moving like it was a boat," said Galloway, a Hackensack resident. "My co-workers looked at each other and said 'This is not normal.' Everybody felt it. Then everybody was outside and was asking what was that, including some guy who ran out in his underwear."
From his perspective at his barber's chair on Main Street, city resident Ray Reed didn't feel surprised one bit.
"Everybody is destined for something. Sooner or later this is bound to come," said Reed. "It's only a matter of time before we're going to get our own tsunami."
Calling the crowds on Main Street after the event "an earthquake festival" and "a big fire drill," a bemused Capt. Bill Sheehan, head of the Hackensack Riverkeeper environmental advocacy group, looked at the earthquake as business as usual for planet Earth.
"I think Atlas shrugged," said Sheehan. "Thank goodness no one got hurt that we know of, and that none of the nuclear power stations got cracked by it. It was kind of a wake up call for a lot of people in the New York metro area who only think this can happen is Los Angeles. It can happen here. But life goes on now."
Email: bonamo@northjersey.com