Note to readers: This story was published on Oct. 29, 2016.
There are few people alive today who lived through the last significantly damaging earthquake in B.C., which struck at 10:13 a.m. on June 23, 1946.
Lawrence Burns remembers.
The 7.3-magnitude earthquake’s epicentre was west of Courtenay and Campbell River, and caused chimneys to collapse, including in Victoria, and the facades of some brick buildings to fail, including the post office and banks.
Undersea power lines were destroyed in Alberni Inlet and near Powell River, and a small tsunami struck Texada Island. There were a number of landslides on Vancouver Island.
A Vancouver man was killed when a small boat was swamped by a wave unleashed when a large portion of a promontory slumped into a bay south of Courtenay.
Burns, now 87 years old, was 17 when the earthquake struck.
He was working at his dad’s garage and service station in downtown Courtenay, readying several buses by servicing them and ensuring they were filled with gas.
The quake struck when he had parked the last bus. At first, he thought he had hit something.
The road rippled like ocean waves and the large front window in his dad’s service shop bent in and out, he remembered.
The gasoline pumps — which in those days held a 10-gallon reservoir in the tank — spilled their fuel.
Along the main street, just a block away, windows broke and chimneys toppled.
Burns could hear the sounds.
He recalled it as the longest 30 seconds of his life.
It could have been worse.
Because it was a Sunday morning, there were few people along the main street. The facade of the brick post office, a popular gathering spot, collapsed.
A chimney crashed through the roof of the elementary school, into a classroom where Burns’ sister Janet would have been on a weekday.
“Somebody could have easily been badly injured or killed,” he said. “If it hadn’t been a Sunday morning, it would have been really disastrous.”
The earthquake was felt in Washington state and all the way to Portland. Another death — a heart attack in Seattle — was attributed to the quake.
In Vancouver, a 25-pound piece of masonry from the CN Rail building crashed to the sidewalk, narrowly missing several people, The Vancouver Sun reported at the time.
Cyclists crossing Lions Gate Bridge said it swayed so much they thought it was going to collapse.
The 1946 quake is a potent warning that people should heed, as the effects would be much worse were a similar-sized earthquake to take place closer to a populated area like Vancouver or Victoria, say scientists.
Damage was light in 1946, in part because Vancouver Island was sparsely settled — just 190,000 people in total. The population has almost quadrupled to 760,000 today.
Estimates of the carnage of a modern-day earthquake close to a major city are chilling.
A scenario modelled by Emergency Management B.C. with the help of Natural Resources Canada — a 7.3 magnitude crustal earthquake directly beneath Vancouver — estimates a death toll of 10,000 across the region with 128,000 people injured.
In a separate scenario modelled by the province for Victoria, deaths are estimated at nearly 1,500.
And a 2013 Insurance Bureau of Canada study found that a severe earthquake off the south coast of B.C. — a 9.1 magnitude earthquake often called the “big one” — followed by a tsunami, would cause $75 billion in damages to buildings, bridges and pipelines.
While loss of life and injury was not modelled for the 9.1 quake, study authors expected wide-scale casualties and severe injuries.
John Cassidy, a seismologist with the Geological Survey of Canada, says it is important to remind people when there are large earthquakes around the world — or smaller ones that are felt here — that British Columbians live in a very dynamic, active earthquake region.
Said Cassidy: “We know these large earthquakes happen here, including some of the world’s largest.”
