By Pete McIntyre

Small earthquake rattles the North Okanagan

Sep 22, 2016 | 3:05 PM

VERNON, B.C. — The ground was shaking in parts of the North Okanagan today.

The area experienced a minor earthquake shortly after noon.

Alison Bird, a seismologist from Earthquakes Canada says it was centered about 14 km east of Vernon.

“It was a fairly minor earthquake. it was a magnitude 2.9, but because it’s quite close to people and fairly shallow, that means that people would have felt it fairly easily. It’s not really large enough to cause damage, but  it’s large enough to shake people up a little bit,” says Bird.

Bird says it’s not unusual for small quakes in the area, saying there has been others in the past.

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“We encourage people to know what to do in an earthquake: to drop, cover and hold on.”

Bird was asked if residents should expect more tremors in the next day or two.

“It’s unlikely. This is not a large enough earthquake that we would expect aftershocks, but there could be associated activity. We don’t know yet.”

There have been no reports of damage from calls to Kiss FM from Lumby, Coldstream, the BX and Vernon.

Daryl Kopetski, who lives in a mobile home park on Faulkner Avenue in Lumby, says some sort of earth tremor took place at about 12:08 pm.

“We were sitting here in the trailer, and we just had some company come in, and all of a sudden, it felt like someone had run into the front of my trailer. The whole trailer was shaking. So I ran outside to look, and all the neighbors were coming out saying, ‘What happened?’ And I said, ‘ We must have had a damn earthquake,’” says Kopetski.

Kopetski says it lasted only one or two seconds and didn’t cause any damage in his home.

Vernon resident Brad Lewicky emailed Kiss FM to say: “Felt a large thump on Mission Hill too. Like a sonic boom.”

Judy Shepherd told us this: “Live just by Hunters Store.  Thought someone hit the house -a muffled “thump” noise.”