1996 Ringwood Earthquake in Northern NJ Recent Small Earthquakes in Northern New Jersey

Small earthquakes with magnitude ranging from 0 to 1.7 that occurred
in a small town in northern New Jersey -- Ringwood -- shook hundreds
of resident in their home in February 18-23, 1996. There were no reported
damage from the shocks. Such small shocks usually cannot be felt by many people.
Why, many people felt the small shocks in Ringwood, NJ ?
Seismic records registered at near by stations operated by LDEO (see map)
indicated that these shocks were extremely shallow, perhaps as shallow as
only few hundreds meters below the surface. Aftershock survey conducted
by a team of Lamont scientists and staff following the shocks on Feb. 18-19, 1996 also
indicated that the main shocks and numerous tiny aftershocks occurred
at very shallow focal depth. Hence, shallow focal depth of these small
shocks caused substantial shaking and felt effects at immediate vicinity
of the epicentral area.


List of Recent Earthquakes in Ringwood, NJ
----------------------------------------------------
Origin Time (UTC) Location Depth Magnitude
----------------- -------------- ----- ---------
yr/mo/dd hh:mm:sec Lat (N) Long(W) (km) Mc
----------------------------------------------------
96/02/18 13:23:57.8 41.073 74.280 1.0 1.5 Ringwood, NJ
96/02/19 13:01:55.3 41.070 74.283 1.0 1.7 Ringwood, NJ
96/02/23 08:30:29.3 41.114 74.320 1.0 0.8 Ringwood, NJ
-----------------------------------------------------


Feb. 18-23, 1996, Ringwood Earthquakes in Northern NJ

Return to EUS Earthquakes

Won-Young Kim, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, copyright©1999, all rights reserved