earthquake away from fault lines

Question

As far as I know there isn’t a fault line anywhere near New Jersey, so how come there was a quake there?

In: Planetary Science

Answer 1

The earthquake may have originated in the Ramapo fault zone, which is in fact partially in New Jersey. Besides the major fault lines we tend to think of such as the boundaries of tectonic plates, there are lots of smaller faults around the world. There can still be earthquakes associated with these, they just tend to be smaller and less frequent.