Quake felt in Okanagan confirmed

OKANAGAN – The Pacific Geoscience Centre in Victoria has confirmed that the large earthquake off the coast of Vancouver Island Wednesday evening was detected as far east as the Okanagan.

Earthquake Seismologist Taimi Mulder says any quake over 5.5 will send “surface waves” out in all directions and can even be registered on the other side of the planet in some cases. According to Mulder, the first quake registered 6.6 and was followed by three smaller quakes within 35 minutes.

“(Residents of Kelowna) definitely would have felt it,” she says. “It generated a lot of long, low, rolling waves through the earth. I think Kelowna is about the furthest away that it would have been felt.”

According to Mulder, the larger the area that ruptures, the further away it can be detected.

“Up at the 6.6 range, there is a lot of low frequencies generated and they travel a lot further,” she says. “This earthquake will be picked up by seismometer’s all around the world.”

Mulder says the Geoscience Centre has received reports from several residents in Kelowna and Summerland, but hopes that others who felt the quake will register it on their reporting website.

“We collect that information through the Did You Feel It? website and we use it as part of our studies,” she says. “To know how strongly people felt it and what effects it had is really important for us.”

To contact the reporter for this story, email Adam Proskiw at aproskiw@infotelnews.ca or call 250-718-0428. To contact the editor, email mjones@infotelnews.ca or call 250-718-2724.