A magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck Vancouver Island and it seems the folks in the Village of Port Alice took the brunt of it.
Keir Gervais, director of emergency operations for the village, said it was “a good little” shake.
“Everyone here felt it, but there was no major damage and no one was hurt,” he said.
“We did a call around to the schools and the mill and other places and everyone was good.”
A spokesperson from the B.C. Provincial Emergency Program confirmed the quake struck at 12:40 p.m. It was initially reported as a 6.7-magnitude temblor before being downgraded to 6.4 later in the afternoon.
Tremors that lasted from 15-20 seconds could be felt by people all over Vancouver Island and parts of the Lower Mainland.
Pam Mackenzie had just sat down with her family for lunch in their mobile home in the Port Alice trailer park, not far from where a large mudslide barreled down the mountain in flooding nearly one year ago.
“At first I thought a big truck was going by outside, but then everything started moving,” said Mackenzie, who described it as a side-to-side, wave-like action. “There’s been road-building going on, so we’ve had a lot of blasting happening, too. But there was no (warning) siren or blast, and it shook long enough to think about what it was and what it wasn’t.”
There was no threat of a tidal wave as a result of the quake, according to the Provincial Emergency Preparedness office.
“The West Coast Alaska Tsunami Warning Centre has advised that no areas of coastal British Columbia are at risk from this event,” a PEP notice noted.
Seismologists said to expect aftershocks, with more tremors in the magnitude 4 or 5 range for the next couple of weeks.
