The Great Snowflake Quake! Flights grounded... Biden on standby... and 17 silly men from City Hall telling us to 'drop to the floor' - EVE SIMMONS's hysterical account of the day New Yorkers lost their minds over a 4.8 magnitude whimper

Where were you during the Great Snowflake Quake?

11.02 am and my iPhone started hurriedly vibrating, emitting a deeply offensive screech, the word 'EMERGENCY' shouting in bold typeface.

Apparently, there'd been an earthquake in the tri-state area (magnitude 4.8).

'REMAIN INDOORS,' the alert implored, nearly 40 minutes after the quake struck.

It's worth noting magnitudes are not even considered 'moderate' until they reach around 5.3. But no matter – wipe away that hangover, pull on your panic boots, the weekend can wait.

Deaths or injuries: zero. Serious damage to property: none. Hysterical frenzy: MAXIMUM.

Scramble the fighter jets, hold the front page, President Biden had been 'briefed' of the incident, we learned.

Then came the cable news calamity.

Fox News's weather girl informed us in her best crisis voice that this rumble was the biggest the East coast had seen since 1884. 'So, before any of us were really alive to feel that,' she said, sounding uncertain.

Cut to DIY footage from a Richard Snyder of Pennsylvania yelping 'Holy f***, Holy f***' as his house seemed to, well, not move at all.

On CNN, reporter Andrew Kaczynski was phoning in to describe the 'crazy' happenings. 'I thought I was going nuts,' he said. 'A mirror was shaking, you know.'

No, Andrew, we don't – tell us more!

Channeling her inner President Zelensky, Governor Kathy Hochul put on war fatigues to hold the first presser.

'We are taking this extremely seriously,' she said. 'There is always the possibilities of aftershocks!'

Oh Kathy, please, I can't bear it. Tell us if Taylor Swift survived!

My email pinged. It was my mom, who lives in London, checking to see I was OK, to which I said thank you, because not many people have asked if I'm OK.

Oh no, wait. That was Meghan Markle in that Tom Bradby interview.

Meanwhile, trains were halted in Philadelphia, almost 100 miles from the epicenter. Flights were grounded for hours at NYC's international airports. But where-oh-where was Mayor Eric Adams?

He was hard to pick out among the panoply of City Hall bods, forced out of their pajamas for the second press conference.

I counted at least 17 of them, including, of course, the head of the sanitation department.

Adams reminded a city that survived 9/11 that 'we are ready for the unexpected', but should you feel any further shocks, 'drop to the floor, cover your head and neck, take cover.' To which I felt shocked and dropped to the floor.

Schools Chancellor David Banks reassured parents that they could stay at the bar and need not 'pick up their children early', thanks to the 'professionalism [of teaching staff] in the face of an emergency'.

Buildings Commissioner James Oddo's motto was 'if you see something, say something.'

Must I waddle to the salad bar across the road with my hands over my head, I wondered. Is a tsunami barreling towards lower Manhattan? And please, will someone tell me if Taylor Swift is safe?!

Now, in all seriousness, my point is: that this minor belly grumble became a major international kerfuffle is really rather mortifying.

Quake-hardened Asian nations must be looking on and laughing.

Here at home, at least 16 US states endure earthquakes semi-regularly – including California, where, in 2022, there were almost 40,000, of which 14 were 'significant', meaning magnitudes of 6.0 and above.

Tremors of that size are concerning. They can cause considerable damage to buildings that have underlying instability, which is not only costly but also potentially ruinous in terms of human injury.

Magnitudes of around 4.0, meanwhile, are akin to a large truck passing by.

In Taiwan, there have been some 2,000 earthquakes with a 4.0 magnitude in the last four decades. In Japan, there are 1,500 every year.

I have to say, as a Brit living in Manhattan, I've been surprised by New Yorkers' thin skins.

Perhaps naively, I assumed their attitude to life's curveballs would be similar to that of Londoners: keep calm and carry on.

After all, this is a city where rats rule the subway, blocks are lined with trash and the sight of a drug-fueled brawl is less daunting than trying to bag a dinner reservation on a Saturday.

This morning, I boarded the F train (F for smells like fart) to find a comatose man surrounded by a pool of vomit.

I chose to move to the next car, but noticed several others had no problem sitting beside this poor chap, blissfully reading their newspapers.

In 2022, twenty New Yorkers contracted the rat-related disease leptospirosis – which can spark kidney failure and, in some cases, death.

Toxic pollution meanwhile causes more than 3,000 fatalities and 2,000 hospital admissions in the city every year.

Midtown hotels are now overrun by migrants shipped North to share the burden with the overwhelmed Southern border. Crime is rampant. Public sanitation is rock bottom.

Perhaps there should be a department for that? And perhaps Mayor Adams's squat team of silly men would do better to address these real problems and, when it comes to a little shudder, make like Taylor Swift… and shake it off.