Today, a 4.8 magnitude earthquake hit New York City at approximately 10:23 a.m. I got a lot of emails about it. Ron emailed me about it first, only moments after it happened.

He was sitting in a café, after the quake hit, trying to get his heart beating again. “I thought my roof was going to fall in. So I rushed out into the hall and took the elevator down to the street.”

Let it be noted that Ron is a smart professional who attended a good college, holds two degrees, has a good job, and earns a decent median income. And yet he chose to use an elevator during an earthquake evacuation.

“It all happened so fast,” Ron points out.

The earthquake was felt throughout the Tri-State Area, including upstate, and Philadelphia. People felt the impact as far away as Maryland. The U.S. Geological Survey says intense tremors were experienced from Maine to Washington, D.C.

“I was out walking my dog,” said Rita, who lives in Manville, New Jersey. “I felt things move underneath my feet, and my dog was totally freaking out.”

The first thing Rita did was call her son and ask if he felt it. He lives in Massachusetts. “I could sorta feel it,” he told his mom, “but the stuff on my counters was shaking bad.”

There have been at least four aftershocks since the earthquake hit. None of them serious. There was little damage done. New York got off the hook easy.

But the real story today is about a guy who I’ll call Todd.

Todd lives in the Bronx. He’s a construction worker. The Bronx is a borough of New York City that contains the poorest congressional district in the United States. Todd lives in a rundown building with his grandmother.

Todd was with his 72-year-old grandmother when the earthquake hit, feeding her breakfast. She is on oxygen. She has a forest of prescription meds on her kitchen counter.

When the earth started to quiver, Todd rushed his grandmother out of the building.

An elderly lady neighbor saw him wheeling Granny down the stairwell, she asked if Todd would help her out as well. So Todd raced back inside and helped the woman down the stairs.

There was another man in the building who asked if Todd would help him evacuate, too. The man has a bad knee, and is partially blind. He was carrying two heavy backpacks of belongings he wanted to take with him.

So Todd rushed back into the building and helped the man down the stairwell. At one point, Todd was practically carrying the man.

On his way down, there was a woman who asked if Todd would help her, too. The woman runs an informal daycare, speaks little English, but spoke fluent Hand Gestures.

She asked whether Todd could help her evacuate her 11 daycare children. So Todd herded them all out of the building in a safe, but hurried manner. One by one.

Soon there were 23 people gathered on the sidewalk, all of whom Todd had helped evacuate the building.

People were so grateful they took turns hugging him until there was a 23-person hug-sandwich occurring on the streets of New York City. Todd admitted that he cried a little because he had never been hugged by that many people before.

Thankfully, in the end, nothing bad happened today. In fact, you could say something pretty good happened in New York City this morning.

And it was all Todd’s fault.