NEW YORK CITY-People up and down the East Coast felt the 5.9-magnitude earthquake that struck Virginia on Tuesday afternoon, prompting a quick response from the New York Chapter of the Building Owners and Managers Association, who alerted its members and landlords to enact its citywide emergency action plan as a result of the temblor. “We started making phone calls and we advised our members to follow the procedures and plans that are in-place through the multitudes of emergency management plans in all of the buildings the city collectively has,” says Lou Trimboli, chair of BOMA NY’s preparedness committee, in an interview with GlobeSt.com, after the quake’s aftershocks caused buildings to sway and vibrate across the five boroughs.

“All the things we are trained to do, we did,” he says. “We've been getting lots of information out to our buildings, and in turn, our buildings have been conversations with the tenants, which is the most important thing. It was a bad event, but I think we managed it really well.”

Both City Hall and 7 World Trade Center were temporarily evacuated as a precautionary measure, but other high-profile buildings such as the Empire State Building were not evacuated. There were also no earthquake-related disruptions to the subways or buses, Metro-North, the Long Island Rail Road or the region’s bridges and tunnels, according to a Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesman. However, cellular phone service was disrupted temporarily.