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Is B.C. ready for the Big One?

Is B.C. ready for the Big One?

When will the Big One hit British Columbia?

An article in this week’s New Yorker magazine has renewed the ever-present fears about just what will happen in the event of the inevitable massive earthquake along the Pacific coast.

But it’s not really the Big One that B.C. has to worry about, says John Clague, the Canada Research Chair in Natural Hazards Research and a professor of earth sciences at Simon Fraser University.

“People think of these magnitude-9 as the worst that Mother Nature can throw at us,” Clague tells Yahoo Canada News. “But those earthquakes are rare — they only occur every 500 years or so.”

The last one to strike the Pacific coast occurred in 1700, setting off a tsunami that devastated the entire West Coast. Nine hours later, it struck Japan.

Such a megathrust earthquake — around a magnitude of 9 – would come from the Cascadia subduction zone that runs from northern Vancouver Island down to northern California.

But the fault is located on the floor of the Pacific Ocean, west of Vancouver Island and about 200 kilometres from Vancouver, Clague says.

Much more likely is a magnitude 6 or 7 quake along the smaller fault lines closer to Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle or Portland, he says.

“We know there’s some potentially bad actors in terms of faults through the Pacific Northwest and they typically produce earthquakes more frequently,” Clague says.

“One of those faults, almost certainly within our lifetimes, is going to slip and just hope that it’s not so close to a city that it’s devastating.”

For example, the 2011 earthquake that hit Christchurch, New Zealand, was only a 6.3-magnitude. It lasted only 10 seconds.

Yet 185 people were killed and the quake caused approximately $20 billion worth of damage because the epicentre was so close to the city.

Preparedness shortcomings

So how prepared is B.C. to deal with either type of earthquake? Not very.

A report commissioned by the provincial government and released in March found several shortcomings.

The Earthquake Preparedness Consultation Report notes the “relative apathy regarding earthquake preparedness in B.C.”

“As a number of reports have highlighted previously, governments and other agencies are not adequately prepared for an event like a catastrophic earthquake,” it says.

Efforts lacked a clear vision, sufficient resources and political will, says the report.

“All too frequently, these factors are present only after a significant emergency event has already taken place.”

Last year, B.C.’s auditor general issued a report of his own that found much the same: Emergency Management B.C., the agency that would deal with the fallout of a quake, is not ready.

“This came as a surprise given that my office first looked at this topic 17 years ago in our Earthquake Preparedness report and arrived at the same conclusion,” auditor Russ Jones says in the report.

“Progress has been made in some areas over this intervening period, but overall, the province is still at a significant risk if a catastrophic earthquake were to occur today.”

Making progress

Justice Minister Suzanne Anton, whose ministry is responsible for emergency management, says the province is making headway.

They’ve recently upgraded the provincial emergency notification system and have spent or committed $17 billion over the past 15 years for seismic upgrades of schools, hospitals, bridges and highways.

Public awareness campaigns encourage residents to be ready.

The province has also contributed $50,000 and the federal government tens of millions to Ocean Network Canada’s Smart Oceans project for real-time ocean monitoring technology that will, among other things, include earthquake and tsunami detection systems.

“When you see or read about the devastation a major earthquake can cause — like it did with the recent destruction in Nepal or what is laid out in this week’s New Yorker — it drives home the need for us all to make sure we are ready,” Anton says in a statement to Yahoo Canada News.

Clague says B.C. has made a lot of progress over the years, including near-constant upgrades to the national building codes.

“The situation is getting better,” he says.