In a seismic twist of fate, a routine earth science lesson on earthquakes at Half Hollow Hills East High School in Dix Hills turned into the experience of a lifetime for teacher Catherine Jennings and her students.
The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. It was precisely 10:23 a.m. on Friday, April 5 – that’s when Long Island felt a 4.8 magnitude earthquake that originated in New Jersey.
“Class started here at 10:20,” Jennings told the Press. “My students walked in, we were getting ready to start our class, just a normal day. And then I introduced them to the lesson, saying ‘There’s two types of earthquake waves that we’re gonna learn about today. One is called a P wave and it travels faster than the others. The other is the S wave, and it travels slow.’ And then the ground started shaking.”
The timing was so surreal, some students even thought it was staged.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Jennings added. “I thought maybe it was the boiler downstairs at first, but it went on for about eight seconds – that’s when I realized how lucky I was. And nobody was hurt from it, so that added to the luck.”
Jennings said she had been telling students about how there were rarely earthquakes on Long Island due to the lack of major fault lines nearby – but speculates this earthquake could’ve been caused by the Ramapo Fault, which runs through New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, or the connected Hopewell fault.
Between the earthquake and the eclipse that next Monday, there was no shortage of geological events for Jennings’ earth science class to experience this year.
Jennings hasn’t given out any Long Island earthquake-related assignments or homework yet, but she may – and since they all lived it, she expects enthusiasm from students about it.
“I am really excited to prepare something,” Jennings said. “Perhaps over spring break coming up, I’ll really sit down and get the data.”
Related Story: Earthquake Felt Around Long Island
