Earthquake measures at magnitude of 6.7 and is felt in Vancouver Island today

Officials at the Pacific Geoscience Centre have confirmed a magnitude of 6.7 earthquake has struck the Northwest coast of Vancouver Island.

People are reporting buildings swaying for extended periods from the Fraser Valley to Campbell River at around 12:41 PT p.m., but there are no reports of damage.
The earthquake was too small to trigger a tsunami or cause more than small damage, but they say aftershocks could be felt in the coming days.



Update:

The shaking was caused by what's known as a crustal earthquake, which means it was believed to have occurred in the top 15 kilometres of the Earth's crust.
That sort of quake isn't unusual for the region, said Garry Rogers, an earthquake scientist with the Geological Survey of Canada.
Rogers, who is based in the Vancouver Island community of Sidney, said hundreds of much smaller quakes happen in the same region each year.
Those quakes are sparked by the sideways shifting of two tectonic plates, called the Juan de Fuca and Explorer plates, along a boundary called the Nootka Fault.
Tsunamis only occur when plates shift up and down, raising mass amounts of ocean water.
The last quake similar sized quake in the region was recorded in November 2004, said Rogers. He said quakes of that size occur in the area about once a decade.

Rogers added people in the area shouldn't be surprised if they feel smaller trembles in the coming week.
"There's a certainty there will be aftershocks," he said. "Already, we've had half a dozen, with the largest being 4.9. But there's going to be hundreds of aftershocks ... potentially measured over the next week."
The seismic event was exponentially smaller than the massive megathrust earthquake and subsequent tsunami that ravaged Japan in early March.
Even though the quake caused more Twitter buzz than real damage, Prof. Brent Ward of Simon Fraser University said it should serve as a strong reminder that West Coast residents live in earthquake country.
"It's kind of a cautionary wake-up call that people need to be prepared for a larger quake," said Ward, who teaches in the university's earth sciences department. "Because we will get one eventually."
As a precaution, the Washington state transportation department sent inspectors to check for damage at the Alaskan Way Viaduct, an aging elevated highway on the Seattle waterfront, as well as two other bridges

Original Article: CBC

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