B.C. quake shaking likely won’t rattle Puget Sound
Oct 29, 2012, 6:50 AM | Updated: 9:56 am
While aftershocks from a 7.7 magnitude earthquake that hit Canada on Saturday continued on Sunday in B.C., seismologists say the shaking up north shouldn’t have an impact on residents of the Puget Sound region.
“There should be no connection at all between an increased possibility of earthquakes in the Puget Sound area,” says Seismologist Brent Ward, from the Simon Fraser University in British Columbia.
Residents in parts of British Columbia were evacuated on Saturday, but the province appeared to escape the biggest quake in Canada since 1949 largely unscathed.
While tsunami advisories were issued for Canada, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and California, Ward says the event posed little risk to the Puget Sound region.
“If there was by any chance a tsunami, by the time it propagated or traveled all the way from Haida Gwaii along the coast of Vancouver and into Puget Sound, it would be in the centimeter range.”
No major damage was reported, but Ward says it was significant and the largest earthquake event in Canada in the last 50 years.
The U.S. Geological Survey says the powerful temblor hit at a depth of about 3 miles and was felt across a wide area in British Columbia, both on its Pacific islands and on the mainland.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
