Early earthquake notification system passes the test in Tofino, national system set for 2024

A team of researchers on Vancouver Island had a big breakthrough after a smaller earthquake struck near the coast of Tofino last Friday.

While the earthquake, measured at a magnitude of 4.8, wasn’t strong enough to cause damage, it was strong enough for the team at Ocean Networks Canada to determine that years of research has paid off.

“The Tofino earthquake was a really nice test,” said Katen Moran, president of Ocean Networks Canada.

The University of Victoria initiative, funded by Emergency Management BC, began installing sensors on Vancouver Island in 2017.

Moran says their sensors were able to detect the primary wave on Friday, she says if it was a bigger earthquake, they would have been able to provide around 35 seconds notice.

“It worked really well,”

“We were able to detect the energy from the earthquake, calculate the arrival time, should there have been a bigger earthquake from ground shaking to arrive,” Moran said.

While that program is making progress, a national system is also in the works, with the first sensor being installed in Horseshoe Bay back in March.

“This is a very exciting technology,” said Alison Bird, a seismologist and outreach officer with Natural Resources Canada's earthquake early warning system.

The system will detect the primary wave, then an alert would be issued to people’s phones and potentially to radio and television stations, similar to an amber alert.

Bird says she’s unsure if a specific time frame would be given for when the earthquake could strike.

“Research has shown that people tend to underestimate the amount of time to do something,” she said.

However Bird says it will give individuals enough time to take basic safety precautions

“Really the best thing to do is that drop, cover, hold on,” Bird said.

She says critical infrastructure operators will get alerts sent directly to them, giving them an opportunity to trigger technologies in place.

"They can open doors, close valves, stop hazardous machinery, that sort of thing, those little things you can do within a few seconds make a big difference in reducing the potential impact of that earthquake,”

The system is expected to be ready by 2024.