It was deja vu for Sheila Mirjah after the unlikely shaking left her shaken.
"It's a feeling you never forget, a feeling of fear," said the East Yaphank woman. "My chair was shaking and I knew instantly it was an earthquake."
Mirjah was at her computer when parts of Suffolk County were rattled by an earthquake from the Atlantic ocean about eighty miles off Southampton.
The small earthquake logged 3.9 on the Richter scale, but shaking could be felt in Connecticut and Rhode Island, as well.
The quake hit around 10:45 a.m. EDT. People from around the area report feeling the tremors, which were centered in the ocean, about 100 miles east of New York City, according to the US Geological Survey. There were no immediate reports of damage.
According to Southhampton Police Sgt. Andrew Ficurilli, the police station in the town shook and dozens of homeowners called having felt the tremor, the first in decades.
He said that the quake could be felt over a least 20 miles, from the town of Sagaponack to Hampton Bays.
Even though the earthquake was small, that didn't matter to Mirjah, who survived the devastating 1989 quake in California.
The trembling Earth conjured up memories she would like to forget.
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"There's no time to prepare for an earthquake," Mirjah said. "And there's no place to run."
Not everyone felt the quake, however.
In one Shirley store, an air vent fell from the ceiling; but, workers insisted nothing shook.
"It seemed like a non-event," said store manager Angela Astare.
