As those in the New York tri-state area attempt to make sense of the 4.8-magnitude earthquake that rumbled residents on Friday morning, many transplants from quake-prone areas aren’t processing the rare temblor with the same degree of shock.
Many whose loved ones are from Taiwan, which just experienced a massive 7.4-magnitude quake, as well as those from California, where the seismic events are a regular occurrence, weren’t fazed by the tremor that shook parts of the East Coast. However, after seeing confusion and uncertainty from those around them, several pointed out that the lack of government preparedness and safety instruction is undeniable.
“It’s the role of leaders and government officials to at least know a minimal amount because in the vacuum of that knowledge, people look to their institutions and their leaders for guidance,” SueAnn Shiah, who’s Taiwanese American and has been checking on friends from the island in recent days, told NBC News.
The earthquake, whose epicenter was in Lebanon, New Jersey, struck just moments before 10:30 a.m. E.T. and was felt from Maryland to Maine. For those with family and friends in Taiwan, earthquake safety has long been a regular part of life. The island has a robust early-warning system, modern seismic building codes, and a significantly upgraded infrastructure that was largely prompted by a deadly 1999 earthquake, experts say.
In the U.S., those in California, Oregon and Washington can also use MyShake, an early warning earthquake app that uses data from the U.S. Geological Survey’s ShakeAlert system.
But the relative rareness of East Coast earthquakes meant many were caught off guard. Shiah, who previously lived in Taiwan, said she wished officials would’ve been more communicative after Friday’s earthquake.
“Usually when it’s in Taiwan, you get an alert on your phone before the earthquake happens or immediately after, and so there is just a sense of preparedness and infrastructure that’s really reassuring amid things that are unpredictable and can feel really chaotic,” said Shiah, who was in Princeton, New Jersey, at the time of the quake. “But I kept Googling for a long time and nothing was coming up. … there wasn’t some government agency that populated something and could assure me that, yes, I had just in fact experienced an earthquake.”
Kalaya’an Mendoza, a New York-based community safety activist who grew up in the Bay Area, said he had also spent the past few days checking on friends in Taiwan. He was shocked to experience an earthquake himself days later. In many Asian American and diaspora circles, he said, many rush to participate in community care. But in cases of natural disaster, the onus should be put on the government to ensure their people are safe.
“This is one that New Yorkers are just not prepared for. In California, we are raised from kindergarten on up on how to duck and cover, and have your safety plan ready, make sure that you know what to take with you,” Mendoza said, adding that, in New York, “Our subway system has been crumbling since Sandy. And it doesn’t feel like we’re set up systematically to deal with a large-scale emergency or disaster.”
Melissa Hung, a Brooklyn-based journalist who has family members in Taiwan, said that while she’s not sure there’s a parallel to draw between the two earthquakes, particularly with the occurrence being rather rare on the East Coast, the proximity of the two events is chilling.
“The aftershocks were still making [my family members] kind of feel dizzy and sick,” Hung said. “I hesitate to assign meaning to it … but it is a little weird that there was a little one here.”
Hung added, however, that the earthquakes highlight how climate change could affect Asian communities.
“I do think climate change is affecting our diaspora and especially on these coastal areas, island areas where sea levels are rising,” Hung said. “Already it’s happening where we have climate refugees, right? That’s just going to intensify for all sorts of people all over the globe.”
While the New Jersey earthquake was the strongest recorded in the Northeast in more than a decade, many from hot spots said their previous experience with the tremors meant they knew exactly what to do. Cameron Kim, a video editor for NBC Sports, which has the same parent company as NBC News, is from the Bay Area and said he calmly warned his girlfriend to take cover and to be on alert for aftershocks.
“As someone who’s from the West Coast, I was very much like, ‘Oh, this is an earthquake,’” he said. “I didn’t hear the pictures on the wall rattle so for me, that’s usually a good indicator of how big the shake is.”
Bing Guan, a photographer who grew up in the Los Angeles area, said the earthquake was so much smaller than many he’s experienced on the West Coast, that it barely registered to him while he was in Manhattan today.
“There’s that joke with Californians or Angelenos that we don’t really bother waking up for anything under a 4.0 magnitude,” he said. “When I was a little kid I literally slept through earthquakes multiple times.”
But as the memes began to trickle across social media, Mendoza said he felt assured that New Yorkers could bounce back from anything.
“One thing that we as New Yorkers are really good at doing is being able to navigate emergencies through a sense of humor, through our resiliency,” Mendoza said. “Every single day here, there’s a new nightmare that’s happening either globally or locally. So I think people’s nervous systems are prepared for this.”
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Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
