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A researcher has identified a major fault line some 50 kilometres off the coast of Vancouver that could rupture in the future, causing a 6.0 magnitude earthquake.
Reid Merrill, a PhD student of the University of British Columbia Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences department, said that the fault line – which lies under the Strait of Georgia – could cause an earthquake similar to the one that rocked Seattle in 2001, which resulted in $4 billion worth of damage.
The fault line was pinpointed by analyzing 30 years of data which tracked a cluster of quake events to the southwest of Texada Island.
Merrill and a colleague, Michael Bostock, determined that the cluster of quakes formed an “earthquake nest,” which spans 10 to 20 kilometres of the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate.
"A 20-kilometre long fault, if it were to rupture in its entirety, would be the equivalent of a greater than magnitude 6.0 earthquake, where the size of the fault is directly related to the magnitude of the event," Merrill told CBC News.
According to Natural Resources Canada, an earthquake with a magnitude between 6.1 and 6.9 can damage poorly constructed buildings as well as other structures in areas up to about 100 kilometres from the epicentre.
Merrill also warned that since the epicentre is closer to metropolitan areas like Nanaimo, Vancouver, and Sechelt, earthquakes coming from the Texada Island fault line “can be more dangerous than the megathrust of the Big One.”
The Juan de Fuca tectonic plate is being forced underneath the North American Plate in a geological process called subducting. Energy from subduction is being stored within the rocks, which could potentially lead to a catastrophic megathrust event nicknamed “The Big One.”
The Texada Island earthquake nest is located just 65 kilometres below the surface, as part of the Juan de Fuca Plate that lies beneath the North American Plate.
