Archive for In The News

Earthquake hits Hardy, it’s a good reminder for you to be prepared

Earthquake hits Hardy, it’s a good reminder for you to be prepared

There was an earthquake 185 kilometres west of Port Hardy Thursday morning.

The quake registered 5.1 and according to the Natural Resources Canada’s online earthquake report, the shake-up occurred at 5:57 a.m. There are no reports of damage and no tsunami warnings were issued for the region.

With more than 1,200 recorded earthquakes every year in British Columbia it is becoming increasingly important not to ignore these incidents and to be prepared.

A new study says the Pacific coast has experienced 22 major earthquakes over the last 11,000 years, and is due for another.

Audrey Dallimore, of the School of Environment and Sustainability at Royal Roads University and the author of the study, said the research showed mega earthquakes occur every 500 to 1,000 years.

The last one took place 313 years ago. A megathrust earthquake occurs when a piece of the earth’s crust is forced underneath another plate.

The quakes are of magnitude 9.0 or greater, and both the 2004 Indian Ocean

earthquake that caused the tsunami in Indonesia and the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan were megathrust events.

“We could have one either tomorrow – or 700 years from now,” said Dallimore.

The last “Big One” that we had in Canada happened in 1700 and measured a magnitude of 9.0. It destroyed Native villages and actually caused a tsunami in Japan.

The 1946 Vancouver Island earthquake, Canada’s largest recorded onshore earthquake to date, was a 7.3

magnitude earthquake that struck Vancouver Island at 10:15 a.m. on Sunday, June 23, 1948. The main shock epicenter occurred in the Forbidden Plateau area northwest of Courtenay and west of Campbell River It was felt as far away as Portland, Oregon. The earthquake knocked down 75 per cent of the chimneys in the closest communities, Cumberland, Union Bay, and Courtenay (including the Courtenay School) fortunately,

the earthquake occurred on a Sunday morning so no children were at their desks. A number of chimneys were shaken down in Victoria and people in Victoria and Vancouver were frightened, many running into the streets.

Because Vancouver Island is located directly on a fault line it is considered to be a high risk earthquake zones.

It is now more important than ever to be prepared for the big one, however putting together an earthquake kit can seem somewhat overwhelming; having the resources immediately at hand to deal with the emergency may make the difference of life or death or at the very least comfort or discomfort.

Source: http://www.canada.com/Earthquake+hits+Hardy+good+reminder+prepared/8728588/story.html

Posted in: In The News

Leave a Comment (0) →

Magnitude 5.0 earthquake recorded off B.C.’s west coast

Magnitude 5.0 earthquake recorded off B.C.’s west coast

Earthquakes Canada said no surge or tsunami was expected to reach shores after a small earthquake rattled the ocean off northwestern Vancouver Island early Friday morning.

Earthquakes Canada and the U.S. Geological Survey recorded the temblor at a magnitude of 5.0 when it hit, at 5:57 a.m. PT Friday morning under the Pacific Ocean, about 170 to 185 kilometres west of Port Hardy, B.C.

The U.S. West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center said the quake was not strong enough to generate a dangerous wave.

The shaker occurred in a region where earthquakes are common because of the movement of several plates of the earth’s crust.

Natural Resources Canada says more than 100 earthquakes of magnitude 5.0 or stronger have occurred off British Columbia in the last 70 years, including the magnitude 7.7 quake, the second strongest ever recorded in Canada, that jolted the west coast of Haida Gwaii last October.

After three hours, neither the USGS nor Earthquakes Canada’s online “felt” maps showed any reports from Friday morning’s quake.

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2013/07/26/bc-earthquake-ocean-vancouver-island.html

Posted in: In The News

Leave a Comment (0) →

Canadian quake refines Pacific tsunami risk

A study of the magnitude-7.7 earthquake that shook the northern coast of British Columbia, Canada, last October has solved a longstanding argument about the region’s geology. The finding suggests that even Pacific islands as far away as Hawaii might need to worry about tsunamis originating from this part of the Canadian coast.

Most of the tsunami threat in North America’s Pacific Northwest stems from the Cascadia fault, where the Juan de Fuca crustal plate dives beneath Washington, Oregon, and parts of California and British Columbia. The 2012 quake struck north of that region, where the Pacific crustal plate slides towards Alaska along a major geological fault known as the Queen Charlotte.

Many scientists had thought that this ‘strike–slip’ motion would not yield big tsunamis, because the two sides of the sea floor move along the horizontal axis, displacing less water than shifts upwards or downwards. But on 27 October 2012, the sea floor near the Haida Gwaii archipelago ruptured along a fault perpendicular to the Queen Charlotte fault. The quake shoved a chunk of Pacific sea floor directly under the North American continent, pushing it upwards and creating the sort of vertical motion that can generate sizeable tsunamis (see ‘Down and out’).

Thorne Lay, a seismologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his colleagues describe this ‘thrust’ geometry in a paper published on 11 June in Earth and Planetary Science Letters. The work confirms that big, dangerous quakes can happen in this region — an idea suggested by researchers at the Geological Survey of Canada in the 1980s, but one that had not been widely recognized, Lay says.

The earthquake was the second largest ever recorded in Canada by scientific instruments. It sent tsunamis rushing at least 7.6 metres up the rugged and sparsely populated western coast of Haida Gwaii. “If it had occurred in the summer, there may well have been people in harm’s way,” says Lucinda Leonard, a geoscientist at the Geological Survey of Canada in Sidney, British Columbia, who led a recent assessment of Canada’s tsunami hazards.

The quake also sent waves racing much farther afield. Forecasters sent alarms to Hawaii, 4,000 kilometres away in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Coastal areas of several islands were evacuated, leading to huge traffic jams. And when the tsunami that materialized was smaller than anticipated — no more than 80 centimetres — people were not impressed.

“My friends on the north side of Oahu felt like they’d been put in harm’s way” in the rush to evacuate to higher ground, says Lay. “We need to better anticipate when there will be dangerous waves.”

Lay thinks that the forecasters did the right thing by erring on the conservative side and warning of a tsunami that was bigger than what actually arrived. But next time, he says, they may do a better job, as they can plug data from the Haida Gwaii quake into models and refine their predictions.

The Queen Charlotte fault itself is unlikely to break again in the near future but geologists may need to rethink whether thrust faults near strike–slip ones could break unexpectedly. The 1989 Loma Prieta quake, near San Francisco, California, also had a surprising amount of vertical movement along a strike–slip fault, says Lay.

Source: http://www.nature.com/news/canadian-quake-refines-pacific-tsunami-risk-1.13234

Posted in: In The News

Leave a Comment (0) →

B.C. due for mega-earthquake along coast

B.C. due for mega-earthquake along coast

The last massive earthquake that shook the south coast of British Columbia took place on Jan. 26, 1700, say researchers who have been able to use sediment samples taken from the sea floor off the coast of Vancouver Island to reveal the Pacific coast’s seismic history.

In a study published Wednesday, the team said the region that stretches from the northern tip of Vancouver Island down the coast to northern California has experienced 22 major earthquakes over the last 11,000 years, and is due for another.

Audrey Dallimore, of the School of Environment and Sustainability at Royal Roads University and the author of the study, said the research showed earthquakes occur every 500 to 1,000 years.

The last one took place 313 years ago.

“What that means is we’re due for another subduction zone earthquake either tomorrow — or 700 years from now,” she said.

“[It] may happen within our lifetimes and will certainly happen at some time over the life of our communities and our infrastructures.”

Researchers extracted a sediment core from the sea floor of Effingham Inlet, in Barclay Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island, and used radiocarbon dating to determine when large or so-called megathrust earthquakes occurred on what is known as the Cascadia subduction zone.

“The sediments preserved on the bottom of Effingham Inlet resemble the rings of a tree,” Dallimore said, explaining that each year is represented by a thin layer of sediment.

“These layers have given us a story of what happened in Effingham Inlet year by year back all the way to the end of the last glaciations about 11,000 years ago.”

No megathrust quake in Canada’s written history

By radiocarbon dating interruptions in the sediment, researchers determined large earthquakes also took place about 1,200 and 4,000 years ago.

The first seismograph was installed in Victoria in 1898, so written records of B.C. seismic activity goes back only a little more than a century but Japanese written records confirm that a tsunami occurred from a magnitude-8 or 9 quake along the North American coast about 9 p.m. on Jan 26, 1700.

A megathrust earthquake occurs when a piece of the earth’s crust is forced underneath another plate.

The quakes are of magnitude 9 or greater, and both the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake that caused the tsunami in Indonesia and the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan were megathrust events.

There has never been a megathrust earthquake along the west coast in the written history of Canada, but the study confirmed First Nations oral histories and found that megathrust earthquakes occur about every 500 years in the region, although they can stretch out for up to 1,000 years.

A magnitude 7.7 earthquake that occurred off the west coast of Haida Gwaii last October was the second-largest ever recorded in Canada but it was not a megathrust quake.

B.C. forms part of the North American portion of what is called the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a 40,000-kilometre horseshoe of ocean trenches and volcanoes where 90 per cent of the world’s earthquakes take place.

According to Natural Resources Canada, the Geological Survey of Canada records more than 1,000 earthquakes in western Canada each year. More than 100 magnitude 5 or greater earthquakes have been recorded in the ocean west of Vancouver Island in the past 70 years.

Megathrust quake rare

Scientists cannot predict when earthquakes will happen, said John Clague, a professor of earth sciences at Simon Fraser University.

But this and other studies show they are inevitable in this region, he said.

And while a megathrust quake is rare and may occur up to one every millennium, other, smaller quakes occur more frequently.

Previous research suggests massive quakes occur in clusters, and it’s unclear where B.C. is in the cluster interval, Clague said.

“They are inevitable and although it may not occur in my lifetime it certainly will occur when Seattle, Vancouver, Victoria are thriving cities,” he said.

“So we do have to prepare for these things. Societally, we owe it to our children and our grandchildren and so on to be as ready as we can for what is inevitable.”

The research by experts at Royal Roads, the Geological Survey of Canada, Natural Resources Canada, Fisheries and Oceans, UBC and the University of California is published in the current issue of the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences.

Source: http://news.ca.msn.com/top-stories/bc-due-for-mega-earthquake-along-coast-1

Posted in: In The News

Leave a Comment (0) →

B.C. is `in the risk zone’ for mega-earthquake along the Pacific coast: study

B.C. is `in the risk zone’ for mega-earthquake along the Pacific coast: study

A new study says the Pacific coast has experienced 22 major earthquakes over the last 11,000 years, and is due for another.

The study looked at sediment disturbance in Effingham Inlet, on the west coast of Vancouver Island.

Study author Audrey Dallimore, of Royal Roads University, says researchers using state-of-the-art radiocarbon dating determined the last so-called megathrust earthquake in the zone that stretches from northern Vancouver Island down to California happened more than 3,000 years ago.

The world’s largest earthquakes are all megathrust earthquakes, which occur when there is a slip along the fault between a subducting and overriding tectonic plate.

There has never been a megathrust earthquake along the west coast in the written history of Canada, but the study found that megathrust earthquakes occur about every 500 years in the region, although they can stretch out for up to 1,000 years.

“The last megathrust earthquake originating from the Cascadia subduction zone occurred in 1700 AD. Therefore, we are now in the risk zone of another earthquake,” Dallimore said in a statement.

“Even though it could be tomorrow or perhaps even centuries before it occurs, paleoseismic studies such as this one can help us understand the nature and frequency of rupture along the (zone), and help Canadian coastal communities to improve their hazard assessments and emergency preparedness plans.”

B.C. forms part of the Northern American portion of what is called the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a 40,000 km horseshoe of ocean trenches and volcanic arcs where 90 per cent of the world’s earthquakes take place.

According to Natural Resources Canada, the Geological Survey of Canada records more than 1,000 earthquakes in western Canada each year. More than 100 magnitude-5 or greater earthquakes have been recorded in the ocean west of Vancouver Island in the past 70 years.

The research by experts at Royal Roads, the Geological Survey of Canada, UBC and the University of California is published in the current issue of the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences.

Source: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/risk+zone+mega+earthquake+along+coast+study/8514396/story.html

Posted in: In The News

Leave a Comment (0) →

Tornado prompts concerns about disaster preparedness in B.C. schools

The ever-present threat of natural disaster is a major concern for Vancouver schools in the wake of the catastrophic Oklahoma tornado that has killed 24 people to date.

Patti Bacchus, Vancouver School Board chair, said she thought immediately of B.C. schools while watching footage of the destruction in Oklahoma Monday.

“We know we have a significant risk of a fairly serious earthquake striking the area, and we aren’t prepared for that,” she said.

B.C.’s seismic mitigation program began in 2004, and 213 schools have been upgraded or replaced since then, at a cost of $2.2 billion. Bacchus said there is still more work to be done.

“They’re expensive projects, but those are schools that have been assessed by engineers to be at high risk of significant structural damage and in the worst case, collapse in the event of an earthquake,” she said.

Timing is the real concern, and Bacchus said a lack of urgency in upgrade approvals needs to be change.

“It is slow, we’re taking a real gamble. We’ve been lucky so far, but we can’t count on luck,” Bacchus said.

Bacchus said she has heard of parents wanting to move their children to schools that have the seismic upgrades.

Laurie Boyle said she feels more confident sending her children to Lord Kitchener Elementary after it was replaced in November of last year.

“It’s a big relief because the old school was a real dump. It didn’t feel safe,” she said. “The anticipation of getting [a new school] was a bit agonizing, but now it’s just a big relief, it’s all over with. And hopefully it will stand up to an earthquake if one happens.”

There are still more than 100 schools across B.C. on the waiting list for seismic upgrades.

Source: http://bc.ctvnews.ca/tornado-prompts-concerns-about-disaster-preparedness-in-b-c-schools-1.1291485

Posted in: In The News

Leave a Comment (0) →

Shifting ‘vibration isolation’ technology from table tops to data centers

Shifting ‘vibration isolation’ technology from table tops to data centers

Talk about a specialized niche. WorkSafe Technologies, of St. Charles, MO, produces devices and contraptions that are intended to isolate natural vibrations in the Earth and protect equipment and property that might otherwise be damaged or destroyed by such vibrations.

WorkSafe for decades has built tabletops and carts — they prefer to call them “platforms” — on which sensitive or valuable instruments and equipment can be placed, and safeguarded, even when the ground beneath them begins to shake violently.

For instance, when the ground beneath a census office building in New Zealand vibrated during an earthquake, recalled WorkSafe’s Mike Reilly, the equipment sitting on his company’s platforms survived nicely. “Everything on our base was intact,” Reilly told Government Security News at the GovSec security show in Washington, DC, on May 14. “Everything else was destroyed.”

Similarly, when a 9.0 earthquake struck Nigata, Japan, houses, offices and property sustained major damage. “But, everything we had survived,” Reilly bragged. “In fact, in Japan, we’ve become the de facto standard.”

For decades, WorkSafe has been manufacturing relatively small platforms. Now, it has set its sights on bigger installations, and a far bigger overall market. The company is now trying to bring its vibration isolation technology to the booming world of data centers. Rather than allow an earthquake or other natural disaster to roll through a data center and shock rows and rows of server racks that each house terra bytes of precious data, WorkStation is morphing its platform version into a system of isolators that can be installed beneath the floor of a data center, and effectively prevent vibrations from disturbing the computer equipment.

Reilly told GSN that his company currently is running a Beta site for this technology in California.

The isolation technology is remarkably simple. Essentially, it consists of a series of round ball bearings that are placed in a cone-shaped container, such that the balls naturally roll towards the depressed center of the container. During an earthquake-inspired vibration, the platform sitting on top of the ball bearings is effectively isolated from the vibrations by the rapid and smooth re-positioning of the ball bearings. Miraculously, the equipment sitting on top of the platform is safeguarded.

Currently, WorkSafe has completed about 80,000 installations, said Reilly, mostly of its “platform” product. Time will tell whether the company can introduce its concept into the data center world, and receive an equally warm welcome.

Source: http://www.gsnmagazine.com/node/29478?c=disaster_preparedness_emergency_response

Posted in: In The News

Leave a Comment (0) →

Earthquake rattles residents in Ontario, Quebec

Earthquake rattles residents in Ontario, Quebec

Buildings were evacuated and people were shaken from sleep on Friday morning after an earthquake struck near the nation’s capital.

Earthquakes Canada reports a 5.2 magnitude earthquake hit near Shawville, Quebec – about an hour‘s drive from Ottawa – shortly after 9:45 a.m.

The agency also reports a 4.2 magnitude aftershock struck less than 10 minutes later.

It might not have been a big quake, but it sure felt like it to David Reid, mayor of Arnprior, Ont., a town located across the Ottawa River, approximately 21 kilometres from the epicentre.

He says he felt like he was standing “right over top” of the quake as it rumbled the ground under his feet for about 15 to 20 seconds.

“All of a sudden the earthquake hit and I must say, it felt like I was standing right over top of it,” Reid told CTV Ottawa on Friday. “This, to me, was the strongest I’ve felt.”

Kevin Newman, host of CTV’s Question Period, said he felt the floor of his office overlooking Parliament Hill ripple under his feet.

“We felt it here,” he told CTV News Channel on Friday. “These are quite common here in Ottawa. There was a little bit of a rippling of the floor underneath your feet as it went by. And you sort of go, ‘Did the cement ground just move?’ And, in fact, it had.”

Before the quake had even been confirmed, Twitter erupted with reports of shaking and building evacuations.

@MeghanFurmanCTV tweeted: “Tremors felt in Kitchener. Regional building evacuated. #earthquake”

@KeeganAtors tweeted: “felt the earthquake in Ottawa too ! Shook my entire apartment building ! #scary” tweeted

Several people said they were shaken awake by the rumbling.

@_jessgouveia tweeted: “That earthquake actually woke me up…

@jaclyntess tweeted: “Nothing like getting shook awake by a casual earthquake”

The quake was felt as far away as Toronto.

The last major quake in the region – measuring 5.0 on the Richter scale – hit less than three years ago on June 23, 2010. That quake’s epicentre was near Buckingham, Que., about 56 km north of Ottawa.

Source: http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/earthquake-rattles-residents-in-ontario-quebec-1.1285923

Posted in: In The News

Leave a Comment (0) →

Major earthquake gives real-life drill to B.C. first responders

Major earthquake gives real-life drill to B.C. first responders

At 8:03 on Saturday night, one minute before the worst quake in 60 years hit the west coast, on-call seismologist John Cassidy was on his hands and knees, sweating and straining as he ripped carpet up in his Sidney home.

In Queen Charlotte City, volunteer fire chief Larry Duke had big plans. It was time to get dressed for the biggest fire department fundraiser of the year: the Halloween dance. Doors were set to open at 10 p.m. and he was going as Napoleon Dynamite. “I had everything laid out, the wig, glasses the moon boots, the vote-for-Pedro T-shirt.”

He had just given his six-year-old son Riley a teaspoon of cough medicine and tucked him back into bed.

Then he felt the rumble.

At precisely 8:04, the vibrations pulsed through Haida Gwaii and Prince Rupert, bouncing residents as far away Terrace and Kamloops.

In Terrace, reporter Anna Killen was in the bathroom, just starting to do her makeup for her costume: evil gypsy unicorn. She had just affixed the black horn to her head when she saw the mirror move. “I was still on my first glass of wine. I thought I was having an anxiety attack,” she said. She ran into the living room, the vertical blinds were swaying and rattling like a paranormal event.

Back in Queen Charlotte City, Mayor Carol Kulesha was cosying up to watch some TV. She had settled in, she might not go to fire department dance but if she did, a Bedouin dress, her go-to costume, was ready. Her Manchester terrier, Chili, was at her feet.

Then it hit.

“It felt like a freight train was coming through my house. It was that loud.”

Chili leaped up and stared at her. Do something.

The 60-seconds of shaking felt like minutes to Duke.

“We’re used to small quakes, they feel like trucks going by. But this one continued to build and build.”

Little Riley ran out of his bedroom crying. Duke grabbed him. His first impulse was to go into the living room, which had a high ceiling, then his training kicked in. “We went under the dining room table. Then the power went out, which added to the scariness of the whole thing.”

In the basement, his wife was about to start a yoga class with some friends. They fumbled toward a doorway and clung together.

Kathy Goalder, the wharfinger at the Sandspit marina was unwinding with a game of darts at the Bunkhouse when she felt the shaking.

She thought people were partying inside, jumping up and down on the floor, making it shake.

But the tremor continued. And continued. And continued.

She ran home to find the bricks stacked around her wood stove had fallen over and water slopped out of the aquarium.

Goalder runs the marina in the tiny town that sits on a sand spit, flanked on either side by beaches.

Most of her friends hopped in their trucks and headed for higher ground.

She ran out to watch for a tsunami or high waves.

It was dark and snowing heavily. The ocean was eerily silent. “Everything was dead calm. not a breath of air. I couldn’t even hear the ocean.”

In Queen Charlotte City, Mayor Kulesha scooped up her dog and, in the dark, grabbed her emergency kit from the hall closet. “It lasted and lasted, it felt like forever.”

She began to pound out the calls on her cellphone as she scrambled into her car to get to the RCMP building.

That’s also when she started making her list of what needs to work better the next time this happens. With the power out, communications faltered. “I could not call people I knew that had cordless phones or no cellphone. If you’re in a remote area like mine, that’s a huge issue.”

At 8:08, the two phones that seismologist John Cassidy wears harnessed to his body at all times buzzed and vibrated.

He dropped his carpet and tools. The adrenalin was already kicking in.

“Anything larger than a (magnitude) 4 triggers all these bells and whistles. We have seismographs all across Canada, they measure and send signals in real time, so we can see just how the ground is shaking. The signals go from the instrument up to a satellite and bounce back to our office.”

When he got the first report, that the earthquake was a 7.1, and the follow up 7.7 as additional data came in, he kicked into high gear.

“When you are up to a magnitude 7, it’s potentially devastating.”

Within 20 minutes, he and his associates from Sidney’s Pacific GeoScience Centre would have information posted and were continually updating it.

Cassidy would work through the night, fielding calls and delivering information for emergency management organizations, tsunami warning systems, monitoring aftershocks and assessing exactly what happened along the fault line. Manning three phones, he put his 20-year-old son to work helping field the calls.

In Queen Charlotte City, Mayor Kulesha met with fire chief Duke at RCMP headquarters. A state of emergency was declared. Firefighters, ambulance crews and other volunteers had thrown emergency vests over their Halloween costumes.

“One lady showed up in a cocktail dress and rubber boots,” said Kulesha.

Already firefighters were door-knocking on the shoreline homes, and using loudspeakers to clear the coastal town. A steady line of tail lights snaked up the logging roads to higher ground.

“I was really proud of everyone,” said Kulesha, adding the event was an opportunity to learn. “Communications for us is the largest issue. I think we need to have more discussion with the federal government about infrastructure.”

After the Southeast Asia Tsunami in 2004, the need for a Tsunami siren had become apparent; one is on order, but hasn’t been delivered yet.

In Terrace, reporter Killen stayed home for an hour or so. “We were worried the Skeena (River) was going to flood,” she said. When it became clear the threat was over, she went to a Halloween party — and it was a good one. “We all had something to talk about.”

In Sandspit, Goalder inspected the marina and the fuel tanks. “It was rocking pretty good, but there was no real damage,” she said.

Queen Charlotte fire chief Duke said some community members were put out that, once the tsunami warning was called off, the dance didn’t go ahead as scheduled. It’s the biggest fundraiser of the year for the small town’s emergency services.

“We’ll have another one later on. We’ll call it the Aftershock,” said Duke.

By 5 p.m. on Sunday, seismologist Cassidy was still up, sleepless in Sidney and fielding phone calls as aftershocks continued. The torn-up carpet would have to wait.

Source: http://www.vancouversun.com/Major+earthquake+gives+real+life+drill+first+responders/7461291/story.html

Posted in: In The News

Leave a Comment (0) →

Weekend quake prompts questions about B.C. emergency response

Weekend quake prompts questions about B.C. emergency response

VANCOUVER — Lisa Kendall really only needs to answer two questions before she decides whether a tsunami might be heading towards her small community on British Columbia’s Haida Gwaii islands.
Has there been an earthquake? Was the ground shaking so much that it was difficult to stand? If the answer is yes to both, then it’s time to get to higher ground.
That’s what happened Saturday evening as a magnitude-7.7 earthquake struck just offshore and shook Haida Gwaii and a large stretch of coastal British Columbia.

It was the only tsunami warning Kendall, the emergency co-ordinator for Skidegate, needed before she and other local emergency officials mobilized an evacuation.
“Anything that’s hard to stand up in for more than a minute, you go to higher ground,” Kendall said in an interview, adding that many in her community came to the same conclusion on their own.
“By the time we got to the firehall, 15 minutes after the earthquake, there was already steady streams of cars going up to the high ground. People went and grabbed all the elders, their relatives.”
The weekend earthquake has prompted scrutiny of how the provincial government handled the quake, with emergency co-ordinators in some municipalities complaining that it took as long as an hour before they heard anything official.

It has also revealed the challenges facing local and regional governments when it comes to communicating those warnings to the public, with some citizens glued to social media and others, like some in Haida Gwaii, living in remote areas without telephone service.

Another earthquake also rattled the area Monday night, striking at 7:49 p.m. with a magnitude-6.2 and at a depth of nine kilometres, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Officials have said they expected aftershocks from Saturday’s quake to continue for several days. One on Sunday had a magnitude of 6.4
Kendall said she didn’t receive anything directly from the government for about an hour Saturday night, but she called the provincial emergency program herself a few minutes after the earthquake and was told there was a tsunami warning.

Officials in some communities, such as Prince Rupert on the mainland, said they received word from the province within 10 or 15 minutes of the quake.
Others, including several on Haida Gwaii, said they didn’t hear anything for about an hour, but they all pointed out their emergency plans take effect as soon as the ground starts to move.
“There was a delay,” said Carol Kulesha, the mayor of the Village of Queen Charlotte.

“But we didn’t depend on that. We got notification directly from the source. We understand we’re remote and that no one is going to come in the beginning to take care of us. We just put our plan into effect.”

Debate about the province’s response prompted Justice Minister Shirley Bond, whose ministry oversees disaster response, to announce on Sunday there would be a full review of what happened.
The earthquake occurred a few minutes after 8 p.m. on Saturday, though the first B.C. government media bulletin warning of a tsunami wasn’t issued until about 9:05. Meanwhile, the first mention of the warning on the official Emergency Info BC Twitter account wasn’t posted until 8:55.

Chris Duffy, executive director of operations with Emergency Management BC, said his office sent out initial details about the tsunami warning 12 minutes after the quake in an email that went to various communities and agencies.

He couldn’t explain why some officials said they didn’t receive word for an hour, but he said the quick response on the ground suggested people had enough information to act.
“Their first notification was from Mother Nature and that was when the ground shook violently,” Duffy told reporters during a conference call.

“To say that folks on Haida Gwaii didn’t get information and didn’t get contact is not quite a fair characterization of what occurred. They had the initial ground shake and took action. They certainly had contact from my staff within minutes.”

Duffy added that many local emergency personnel, as well as news outlets, would have received a warning from the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center a few minutes after the quake.
The actual responses in each community varied, depending on the resources available and the people living there.

There is only one tsunami siren on Haida Gwaii, located in the community of Massat. It was blaring a warning almost immediately after the earthquake.

In communities such as Queen Charlotte, which is waiting for a new tsunami siren to be delivered, police cruisers drove around using their loudspeakers to warn residents.

Tow Hill Road, a tiny community on the north end of Haida Gwaii, has an automated phone system to call residents in an emergency, but emergency co-ordinator Chris Ashurst said telephone numbers become out of date and some residents don’t even have phones.

“We do rely on people checking on their neighbours,” said Ashurst.

“We’ll use any tool we can out here. If it’s driving up people’s driveways and banging on the door, then that’s what we use.”
None of the communities in the immediate vicinity of the quake appeared to rely on social media to get the word out. Emergency Info BC was mocked on Twitter by users complaining about the dearth of information, which prompted whoever was overseeing the agency’s account to write: “We do not compete with media (or Twitter).”
Andrew Sachs of Witt Associates, a Washington, D.C.-based company that specializes in emergency preparedness, said social media and mobile technology are fast becoming powerful tools to get information out during a potential disaster.

“You can actually provide visual messages and you can actually choose, based upon where a cellphone is located, what type of messaging goes out,” Sachs said in an interview.
But Sachs acknowledged such technology has limitations, notably that many demographics aren’t plugged in to social media.
“All of these tools are partial solutions,” he said.

“You’re unlikely to get a substantial hit among seniors 65 and older from tweeting, but for people 30 and under, that may be one of the best tools available to reach them. The people who receive those tweets often begin to pass that message along, using not only social media but also more traditional forms of communication.”

Source: http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/weekend-quake-prompts-questions-about-b-c-emergency-response-1.1016445

Posted in: In The News

Leave a Comment (0) →
Page 17 of 18 «...101415161718