Quake in Japan has no effect on our own fault lines
Posted March 14, 2011 5:29 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Japan’s massive quake does nothing to reduce the risk of a large quake here in Vancouver.
It’s been about 300 years since this area was hit by an earthquake like the one that’s causing so much misery on the other side of the Pacific. Quakes of that magnitude might happen here once in 250 years.
Tammy Mulder with the Pacific Geoscience Centre says sometimes the gap is 800 years between events. “We are now in the time window for another one of these large events. It could occur any time between now and the next 500 years,” she explains.
Although BC sits along the same Ring of Fire that Japan does, we don’t have to fear that there will be a ripple effect. “There is no correlation with large earthquakes elsewhere in the Pacific Rim.”
She says there’s really no accurate way to predict these events ahead of time. She adds there hasn’t been any unusual seismic activity here since the Japan quake.
