Early this morning, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake in Alaska made world headlines, leading to tsunami alerts along the western seaboard from British Columbia down to Northern California, and across the ocean in Japan. Fortunately, the slow-rolling quake occurred too far off the coast to cause much damage, but its intensity was enough to put emergency services on high alert. The west coast has long dreaded the arrival of “The Big One,” a quasi-apocalyptic shifting of the earth’s plates that could bring a 9.0 megathrust quake, shaking down skyscrapers and drowning low-lying cities and towns. According to the CBC, “the real Big One — the one that keeps engineers awake at night — is actually a magnitude 7.0 crustal earthquake, with an epicentre close to Victoria and Vancouver.” We’ll be looking at what happened during the Alaska earthquake today, and how agencies staffed by graduates of programs such as Wilfrid Laurier University’s online Master of Public Safety or Emergency Management Graduate Diploma program responded to the potential crisis.

What happened in the Alaska earthquake on January 23, 2018?

Per a CBS News report, at 12:30 a.m. the powerful quake hit roughly 170 miles southeast of Kodiak Island in the Gulf of Alaska. Mainlanders experienced minor vibrations lasting about a minute and a half in most cases; of greater concern was the possibility of tsunamis reaching coastal communities. Early reports overestimated the quake’s magnitude at an 8.2, triggering numerous warnings by local authorities such as Emergency Management BC, Public Safety Canada, and the U.S. National Weather Service among others. Kodiak residents who managed to sleep through the rumbling were no doubt awakened by sirens blaring at 1:00 a.m. after officials noted significant tide level fluctuations in the city channel. Emergency broadcast networks and social media accounts warned residents to be ready to move inland or to higher ground, where the town had prepared shelters. Measured at a magnitude of 7.9 (M 7.9), this incident was more powerful than nine of the ten largest quakes ever recorded in Canada (Earthquakes Canada), some of which were powerful enough to trigger devastating mudslides, crack steel-reinforced concrete towers, and knock cattle off their feet. By comparison, the epicentre of the predicted “Big One” that will someday batter Vancouver will be similarly remote, but at +M 9.0 it will be more than 1,000 times as powerful; had today’s earthquake been closer to the city, we might have been looking at a potential catastrophe.

In this case, public safety agencies took no chances, moving vulnerable populations to established shelters and mobilizing resources to stand ready in case a general evacuation became necessary. In British Columbia, this process was led by Emergency Management BC. Well aware of the potential threat, a number of years ago the agency developed the BC Earthquake Immediate Response Plan. This document helps to define the roles and coordinate the activities of local governments, First Nations communities and NGOs in responding to a crisis. Modern infrastructure is complex to a daunting degree, and much relies on interconnectivity: when one link in the chain fails, those around it are also at risk. The Immediate Response Plan must take into account provision of emergency social services, critical infrastructure, supply chain logistics and much more.

In 2016, the agency conducted the first-ever full-scale earthquake and tsunami response exercise based on this plan. Emergency Management BC described the simulated scenario as follows:

Exercise Coastal Response 2016 was based on a magnitude 9.0 earthquake resulting from a rupture of the Cascadia Subduction Zone off the coast of southwestern B.C. In this exercise scenario, strong shaking lasting several minutes would occur in areas of Greater Vancouver, Greater Victoria and central Vancouver Island, causing some destruction in the major urban centres and widespread damage in the Port Alberni valley. The earthquake would also generate a tsunami on the west coast of Vancouver Island minutes after the initial shock.

The $1.2 million exercise involved 800 workers and 65 organizations, from the RCMP to the Canadian Armed Forces, to private companies such as Selkirk Industries. There were rescue, and extraction exercises using simulated buildings and rubble; planes and helicopters performed evacuation and reconnaissance drills; the Salvation Army deployed kitchen trailers to deliver meals to more than 300 people, simulating the potential burden of citizens displaced from their homes; there were interoperability exercises to ensure that communication was effectively managed; and the Ministry of Health ran emergency exercises at a local hospital. The sheer scale of this operation brings home how seriously public safety agencies take the threat of earthquakes on Canada’s west coast. Although we were lucky that no one was hurt in today’s earthquake in Alaska, the response by authorities to the incident should bring a degree of peace of mind to those who live their lives on the tension of a fault line.

Sources

CBC: The Big One: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/fault-lines-big-one-1.379...

CBS News: Post-quake Tsunami Alerts Lifted: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alaska-earthquake-tsunami-warning-west-coas...

Earthquakes Canada: Canada’s Ten Largest Earthquakes: http://www.earthquakescanada.ca/pprs-pprp/pubs/GF-GI/GEOFACT_largest-ear...

Emergency Management BC: BC Earthquake Immediate Response Plan: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/safety/emergency-preparedness-respons...

Emergency Management BC: Initial Findings from Exercise Coastal Response: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/public-safety-and-emergency-services/e...