Magnitude 4.9 earthquake reported off northwestern Vancouver Island
VICTORIA — A series of small earthquakes off Vancouver Island in recent days likely aren’t a precursor of bigger shake-ups to come, but are a reminder of the complex geological zones along coastal British Columbia, says a federal seismologist.
The U.S. Geological Survey reported a magnitude 4.9 quake occurred Friday morning off Vancouver Island, while a 4.2 quake was recorded on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state on Thursday.
Wednesday, there was a 4.4 temblor off western Vancouver Island and a 4.2 quake in Washington State, southwest of Seattle.
“That area has already been known to us to be very seismically active,” Honn Kao, a Natural Resources Canada research scientist, said Friday. “Having earthquakes in that particular location is not very much of a surprise to us. What happens at that place is it is a tectonically very complicated region.”