[Trending News] Earthquake shakes Vancouver, other parts of B.C.

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Steve Stinchcombe was in his living room combing through prospective jobs for his company, Sechelt Glass, when the strong shaking began on British Columbia’s South Coast early Friday afternoon.

He immediately worried about the hundreds of panes of glass propped up all around his property. Thankfully, the ferocity of the estimated 5.4 magnitude earthquake – which had an epicentre about 24 kilometres northwest of him – dissipated within a couple seconds and the smaller tremors tapered off shortly thereafter.

“If it was a longer, stronger one, then I would have had a mountain of glass sitting around my place,” said Mr. Stinchcombe, who had never felt an earthquake during his 17 years living on the Sunshine Coast, a constellation of communities a short ferry ride northwest of Vancouver.

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Natural Resources Canada reported that around 1:26 p.m. the quake also began shaking Vancouver, Victoria and other B.C. cities, including as far away as Prince George.

Those living up and down the coast reported frayed nerves but no injuries. Homes and businesses rattled, but the damage was merely cosmetic.

Leonard Lee, a director for the Egmont/Pender Harbour regional district north of Sechelt, said the earthquake should spur additional preparation among the more than 30,000 people who call the Sunshine Coast home. Experts agree that over the next four decades B.C. has a one-in-10 chance of being hit by a magnitude-9 event, which is similar to the megathrust earthquake near Japan in 2011 that created a massive tsunami.

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“The problem with it is people get concerned immediately after the event but – shortly after – it kind of wears off,” he said, adding that the province’s warning system alerted his cellphone of the quake shortly after it ended and instructed him to remain in a safe place in case of aftershocks.

For residents, being prepared means assembling “go kits” full of essentials that can be grabbed in the case of an evacuation, said Mr. Lee. Meanwhile, he said, elected officials including himself have been busy backing up the region’s tap water system with wells that could replace the main reservoirs if they were to fail. That project would cover roughly three quarters of the residents and will likely be done by 2027, he said.

Linda Buchanan, the mayor of the City of North Vancouver, said the quake was felt in Burnaby at the Metro Vancouver headquarters. “I was on the 28th floor of Metro Van when the earthquake happened. Heard a loud boom and felt the tower shake. It was frightening,” she posted on X, the social media platform.

She went on to raise the alarm about discussions by Metro Van to cut earthquake monitoring system research.

“It should come as a stark reminder of the role Metro has and the unintended consequences of slashing programs without a proper review,” she added.

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Sheri Molnar, an Earth sciences professor at the University of Western Ontario, is the principal investigator of the Metro Vancouver seismic microzonation mapping project. She said the research, which started in 2017, is producing local maps to show how earthquake shaking propagates through different geological conditions and brings the potential for landslides and liquefaction.

So far, her team has produced 29 maps covering western Metro Vancouver and their work is now focused on the eastern half of the populous region. The maps highlight the variability in earthquake experiences owing to subsurface geology, and they depend on data from earthquakes, such as the one that occurred on Friday, to help produce their forecasts.

“It’s this kind of earthquake that totally gets the conversation going, because depending on the geology, you felt it different from somebody else – the intensity of the shaking, the frequency, the vibrations and the duration all vary depending on the ground you are standing on.”

Friday’s earthquake was shallow and to the north of Metro Vancouver – a combination that has not been previously recorded by seismologists, she noted.

Commercial fisherman David Mackay was working in his shop in Pender Harbour, roughly 30 km west of the epicentre, when the rumbling started.

“The whole building shook,” he said. “It sounded like a Mack truck was about to drive through the shop,” he said. “The walls were all shaking. I haven’t felt one quite like that before.”

With a report from Patrick White in Toronto and The Canadian Press