People in Victoria who were within two blocks of the ocean were advised to more to higher ground. That would have been us. We paid extra earthquake insurance for our house because we were in a tsunami zone. I'm glad I missed this event although it's encouraging that the alert systems seemed to work very well.
I hope things weren't too much of a problem for our friends and neighbours in Victoria...thinking about you guys!
**Update from our friends in Victoria in the tsunami zone:
"In Victoria, Mayor Lisa Helps says fire and police had just mobilized to begin evacuations when the warning was cancelled." Well, I hope that was the case but some people seemed to get alerts so it will be interesting to get more information on it all.
From Mary and Derek:
We weren't aware of the tsunami warning until I turned on the global tv news around 7 this morning! Prov govt thought all went well in notifying people on the west coast but Vaughn Palmer, who lives in Victoria, begs to differ. He too slept through the night. Warning extended down through washington and oregon.The quake itself registered 7.9 on the richter scale so a great relief...for now!
Thanks for thinking of us. We'll see what emergency communications improvements this scare brings about. Social media and going door to door don't seem like a plan at 4:30 a.m.
From Fern and John:
Thanks for thinking about us. Thankfully we weren’t disturbed. Given the high SE winds and high tide it could have been a bad situation if it had amounted to anything.
You must be very glad to be missing all this. And yes, the Gorge is in the tsunami zone.
From Susan and Chris:
I had no clue that this earthquake happened and that there was a tsunami warning until I went on Facebook this morning! There apparently was an alarm in Victoria but I didn’t hear it. My cousin, Scott, who lives in Port Alberni, had to drive to higher ground. There were people in Victoria who drove or walked to Mount Tommie, Mount Doug or other high ground. Wow! All this drama and we were oblivious.
We had a big storm two days ago and today it is also very windy, although only a mild 48 km. per hour wind instead of 80 km.!
Mt. Tolmie around 3 am this morning.
It seems Vancouver isn't a tsunami zone but of course it certainly is prime for a major earthquake as is Palm Springs. Ah well, no point worrying about it. Hard to worry about much with a brilliant blue sky and temps reaching 75 F today.
