A “rare” earthquake rattled part of the Big Apple early Tuesday — prompting some shaken residents to mistake the tremor for an explosion.
City officials said they initially thought an underground blast had shaken a building on Roosevelt Island, prompting a flurry of emergency calls and a massive FDNY response, but that the incident turned out to be a minor quake.
“I said, ‘Oh my goodness! What is happening?’ I woke up my daughter because usually when there’s an earthquake, it’s followed by aftershock,’’ said resident Rosemary Musumba, who explained she knew a slight temblor had struck the city because of a previous quake she experienced in Turkey.
“It wasn’t as much, going by previous experience, but I felt it,” the 30-year-old mom said of Tuesday’s local quake.
“It was very light but very swift. It felt like a minute, but I think it may have been less than a minute.”
Local officials and the US Geological Survey agency reported that the 1.7 magnitude quake struck under nearby Astoria, Queens, shortly before 6 a.m. around the same time calls of an explosion flooded local authorities.
“I jumped up from bed— it was extremely loud,” said a man who lives at The Landings apartment building on Roosevelt Island where most of the 911 calls came from, referring to commotion caused by the quake.
“Nothing fell, nothing broke,’’ he said. “ It wasn’t scary, but it was early in the morning, so very startling.”
The rumble was the strongest quake to hit the city since Oct. 27, 2001, when Gotham faced a 2.4 magnitude earthquake, according to the Fox Weather Center.
Otherwise, earthquakes in New York City are few and far between, with Tuesday’s tremor only the eighth quake since 1970, Fox Weather senior meteorologist Jordan Overton told The Post.
“It’s obviously pretty rare,” he said.
The FDNY was called to The Landings on Main Street south of the Roosevelt Island Bridge and Tramway for reports of shaking and an explosion before turning over the probe to Con Edison, a department rep said.
The power-company representative said crews at the site didn’t find any damage, fire, smoke or explosions tied to their equipment. No injuries or power outages were reported, either, Con Ed and the FDNY said.
The city’s buildings department said no structural issues have been found during its inspection of the area.
Jessica Turner, a geophysicist with the USGS, told Gothamist that residents confused the earthquake for an explosion because “people in this area of New York are not used to earthquakes, they didn’t know what it was.”
A Roosevelt Island resident named Emily, who was walking her dog afterward, said, “I felt the shaking, woke up and went right back to sleep.’’
Another resident, Kim Yang, who just moved to the area, said, “It woke me up out of my sleep.
“I never felt anything like it,” the new local said. “I actually thought I was dreaming because it happened so fast. I only knew something happened when I saw a bunch of fire trucks out my window a few moments later.”
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