Sunday, October 28, 2012

Earthquake Triggers Tsunami Warning

Tsunami Warnings/Advisory Now Lifted

The above Google map shows the location of a 7.7 magnitude earthquake that occurred Saturday evening at about 8:10 pm.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre issued a warning for as far away as Hawaii but apparently no damaging waves occurred. Initially there seems to be little damage reported even in communities close to the epicenter of the quake.

Nanaimo's Response?

I tuned into the local radio station and heard nothing but music, I am also signed up for the Nanaimo Emergency Call Alert program and heard nothing either. I am not sure what action, if any, our provincial and local emergency response teams initiated when the Tsunami warning was first issued but it appears to be a limited response.

If it had not been for the CBC cutting in with 'breaking news' at 10:30 pm reporting on the event which had taken place 2 hours earlier I would have been completely unaware of the event. Given our concerns for earthquakes and tsunamis and such I would have expected a more vigorous response perhaps.

How Reported?

Given that this was a serious sounding event and given there are no hockey games on, and given it was a slow news night, CBC needs to be forgiven for the way this event was reported across the airwaves.

I got an email from my sister living in Ontario and according to the reports she was hearing it sounded like great disaster had struck the coast and we were all in great peril. I contrasted that with the report I heard which interviewed a Canadian official saying there was little chance this type of event would trigger a tidal wave. I also heard from phone in 'reports' where people living right in Haida Gwaii felt shaking etc. but were not reporting any damage to buildings etc.

On the CBC television coverage, caller after caller from closer to the area phoned in explaining what they had felt, most said their house shook a bit but none were reporting anything you could describe as a very serious event.

So it seems the news machine made much more of this 'seismic event' than our local emergency officials.


Comment: Given this was a 'seismic event' and the engineer evaluating the exisitng Annex advises that any such event could result in severe damage, I hope an evaluation is done before city staff are allowed to re-enter the building.

allvoices

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