3.8-Magnitude Earthquake Shakes Up Harvard, Greater Boston

While Christopher B. Ruiz ’26, a junior in Adams House, was scrolling through his phone in bed at 10:22 a.m. on Monday morning, he suddenly felt his bed shake.

“My bed starts shaking, and I’m like, ‘oh my goodness, what is going on?’” he said.

Ruiz immediately logged onto Sidechat – a social media app that allows users to post anonymously – to see what was going on. Ruiz said within minutes, students began to post about the earthquake.

A 3.8-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of York, Maine that morning. Tremors were felt as much as 100 miles away, including at Harvard. There were no immediate reports of injury.

Professor John E. Ebel ’76, a senior research scientist in the Boston College department of earth and environmental sciences, said that Monday’s earthquake was a “once every roughly five year earthquake on average in New England.”

Harvard geology professor John H. Shaw said that though the intensity of the earthquake was moderate, the makeup of the Earth’s crust in New England caused the waves to travel further.

Ebel said it is unclear when the next earthquake could occur in the New England region.

“There’s no surefire method for earthquake prediction. So I get as surprised as the next person when earthquakes occur,” he said. “If a major damaging earthquake were to happen in New England tomorrow, it wouldn’t surprise me. If it were not to happen for another 100 years, that wouldn’t surprise me either.”

Santiago Pardo Sánchez, a tutor and librarian in Adams House, said he was inspired by “Dean Khurana’s message about the importance of the written word” to begin a poetry contest on the Adams House mailing list to “commemorate the experience.” Pardo Sanchez said that multiple students shared poems about the earthquake on the list.

But for students like Ruiz, the earthquake’s tremors failed to shake up much.

“It wasn’t a day that’ll change my life or anything,” he said.

Correction: January 30, 2025

A previous version of this article referred to Adams House tutor Santiago Pardo Sánchez by an incomplete surname.

—Staff writer Adrian Z. Yin can be reached at adrian.yin@thecrimson.com.