Magnitude 7.7 earthquake prompts Tsunami warning

October 28, 2012 | British Colombia

A magnitude 7.7 earthquake that struck British Columbia at approximately 8:04 p.m. Saturday night on Queen Charlotte Island located approximately 125 miles southwest of Prince Rupert Island off of Canada's Pacific Coast produced tsunami warnings for parts of Canada, Alaska and Hawaii. According to the Los Angeles Times, any impact for California appears to have passed and any waves generated should be too insignificant to detect.

There were no immediate reports of major damage as the quake's epicenter occurred under an island and mostly in shallow water. Would the quake have happened in a heavily populated area, a magnitude 7.7 quake would cause significant damage.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC), the earthquake was felt all along Canada's western coast as far as Seattle, Washington, and produced evidence of some tsunami activity although it was not believed to be powerful enough to cause damage. The NEIC states that the quake occurred as a result of an oblique-thrust faulting near the plate boundary between the Pacific and North America plates and at the location of this event, the Pacific plate moves approximately north-northwest with respect to the North America plate at a rate of approximately 50 mm/yr. The region in Canada hit Saturday evening has hosted 7 earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater over the past 40 years – the largest of which was a magnitude 6.6 earthquake in 2009.