On Thursday, an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.4 rocked southwest Canada, close to Vancouver.
The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the earthquake’s epicenter was about 130 miles away from Tofino, a tiny community on Vancouver Island in the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of Canada. About 130 miles to the west of Vancouver sits Tofino. The depth of the earthquake was about 6.2 miles.
According to the Survey, Tofino’s population of about 2,000 people would experience light shaking.
Just after eight in the morning local time, the rumbling was first heard. The USGS first estimated its magnitude to be 6.5, but minutes later they reduced it to 6.4.
The USGS stated that two other earthquakes struck the same area in the following few hours: one with a magnitude of 5.4 struck about an hour later, and another with a magnitude of 4.7 struck at around 10:30 local time.
According to the Canadian government, an earthquake with a magnitude greater than 6 is deemed significant and has the potential to destroy “poorly constructed buildings and other structures” up to 62 miles distant.
A USGS research geophysicist named Dara Goldberg stated that “well over 100” magnitude 6 earthquakes are reported each year.
After the earthquake, the USGS stated that there was no chance of a tsunami.
Less than a week has passed since a magnitude 5 earthquake on Friday morning occurred in the same location. The earlier earthquake had the same recorded depth and was likewise centered in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Canada, some 150 miles from Tofino.
According to Goldberg, the most recent earthquakes occurred at the interface of the Juan de Fuca and Pacific plates. “If you have two tectonic plates meeting, it’s always more prone to earthquakes than, say, the middle of the continent,” she stated.
According to her, earthquakes frequently occur in sequences. “You have these stresses, these pressures that build up at the boundary between two tectonic plates,” she explained. The definition of an earthquake is “when part of it slips, when it slides one plate against the other.”
A moderate-sized earthquake of magnitude 6.4 might cause smaller earthquakes to “pop off along the edges,” according to her.
