Peninsula Daily News
news sources
VICTORIA — There are no immediate reports of damage from a 6.4-magnitude earthquake off the west coast of Vancouver Island.
The U.S. Geological Survey recorded the quake at 12:41 p.m. today. The epicenter was about 130 miles north of Neah Bay, which is at the tip of the North Olympic Peninsula.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said the quake did not generate a tsunami but was felt as far away as Vancouver, B.C., Seattle and San Francisco.
People at the USGS website that they felt the quake in Seiku, Port Angeles and Sequim.
The quake occurred at a depth of 14.3 miles and was centered offshore 73 miles west-northwest of Ucluelet, a little less than half way up the west coast of the island about 179 miles from Victoria.
It was initially reported as a magnitude-6.7 earthquake but later revised.
“It looks like a quake on a secondary fault — not on the megathrust, which was our big concern,” said John Vidale, director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network at the University of Washington in Seattle.
“It’s generating a fair number of aftershocks, but there’s a very small chance this will stimulate activity on the big fault on the coast.”
While it was felt hundreds of miles away — at the Vancouver Sun newsroom in Vancouver,more than 180 miles away, lights swayed for a half-minute when the quake struck — a Royal Canadian Mounted Police dispatcher in the nearby town of Tofino, near Ucluelet, said there were no damage reports and most people barely felt it.
There were likewise no reports of damage in the nearest parts of Washington state, including the San Juan Islands and on the North Olympic Peninsula.
In Seattle, the state Transportation Department dispatched inspectors as a precaution to check for damage to the Alaskan Way Viaduct, the aging elevated highway along the Seattle waterfront, as well as the Deception Pass Bridge and the Highway 520 floating bridge across Lake Washington.
Brent Ward, a professor in Simon Fraser University’s department of earth sciences in Vancouver, said the quake was probably too deep to generate a tsunami.
