During a panel discussion Friday on the “Varney & Co.” set, co-hosts looked at one another with shocked expressions as the floors and cameras rattled the New York City studio.
“While Lauren and I were on the air with a four-star retired general, if you look carefully, you can see the desk shaking just a little, and the camera was definitely shaking,” host Stuart Varney said shortly after impact. “I thought a bomb had gone off.”
A moderate earthquake struck New Jersey Friday morning, with reports of shaking felt across New York City and much of the Northeast.
The U.S. Geological Survey recorded a preliminary magnitude 4.8 earthquake about three miles northeast of Lebanon, New Jersey, at 10:23 a.m. ET.
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The earthquake was the strongest to hit New Jersey since 1884, the FOX Forecast Center said.
“We felt the shaking and I could hear a sort of rattling noise. And at first I thought it was construction. But then it dawned on me, you know, this is probably an earthquake,” Varney reflected.
“I’ve got some contacts from somebody who lives in Connecticut who said their friend described his computer monitors shaking and the bookcase falling over,” Fox News correspondent CB Cotton mentioned in her “Varney” report.
“And then I talked with some people who live over in Brooklyn, in New York City, one person telling me his building was shaking for 20 seconds,” she added. “And he was worried that the scaffolding in front of his building was going to come down.”
New York Gov. Kathy Hocul and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy have both reacted to the seismic activity and activated emergency responses to begin assessing local damage.
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White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre also posted on X that President Biden has been briefed on the earthquake and “is in touch with his team” as well as federal, state and local offices to monitor potential impacts.
Sources from the office of New York City Mayor Eric said there are no current reports of significant impacts, and officials are still assessing the situation.
FOX Weather’s Chris Oberholtz contributed to this report.