Prince George, B.C. – The aftershocks continue to rumble along the B.C. coast line but none of the shocks has matched the mark reached by the shaker that rocked the province Saturday night.

 

The Saturday night earthquake   had a magnitude of 7.7 when it struck shortly after 8 p.m. off Haida Gwaii..   It was felt in nearly every community in B.C. and as far east as Edmonton, yet, miraculously, there have been no reports of anyone being injured or any damage.

250NEWS readers  from Haida Gwaii to McBride,  and from Fort St. John to Williams Lake, reported  feeling queasy, of light fixtures swaying, pictures on the walls sliding back and forth and of their furniture “hopping” across the living room. Most residents of Masset on Haida Gwaii were forced to higher ground as were residents close to sea level in Prince Rupert as there were concerns there would be a tsunami.

 

As of last evening, there had been nearly 60 aftershocks, with the most significant hitting 6.3 on the Richter. But there have been no   further tsunami warnings.

 

While there has been criticism about the  access to and dissemination of information  when the Saturday quake happened, Shirley Bond, Minister for Public Safety, told 250NEWS the Government’s response was rapid “So we should be clear here, as soon as the government knew that there was a situation in this province, that opened the provincial Emergency Co-ordination Centre. We had a provincial emergency response operations centre up and running in Victoria, in Prince George and in Terrace. That was done within a matter of a very short period of time.” (see complete story here) 

 

Saturday night’s shaker was not the worst quake in Canada   since 1700. That distinction goes to a quake that  occurred on August 22^nd in 1949 and  had a magnitude of 8.1 . It was centred off the B.C. coast in what is known as the “Queen Charlotte Fault” .   According to  Natural Resources Canada, that quake caused shaking that was so severe on Haida Gwaii “that cows were knocked off their feet, and a geologist with the Geological Survey of Canada working on the north end of Graham Island could not stand up. Chimneys toppled, and an oil tank at Cumshewa Inlet collapsed. In Terrace, on the adjacent mainland, cars were bounced around, and standing on the street was described as ‘like being on the heaving deck of a ship at sea”. In Prince Rupert, windows were shattered and buildings swayed.”