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How Victoria residents are preparing for the Big One

Experts warn that the B.C. coast is due for a massive shake in the coming decades. Here's what Gregor Craigie, author of "On Borrowed Time: North America's Next Big Quake," is doing to make sure his home will survive: 

For West Coasters, it’s hard to ignore the threat of the Big One—especially in Victoria, the city where I live, and which is probably at greater risk of major devastation due to an earthquake than any other Canadian city. Every time an earth-shaking tragedy happens somewhere else, that risk is brought into sharp relief, because we know one day it will happen here—and “one day” may not be that far into the future.

A report commissioned by the city of Victoria in 2017 looked at different types of earthquakes that could shake the city, including two worst-case scenarios: an offshore, magnitude-9 subduction quake, or a magnitude-7 crustal quake, closer to the city. The first would be caused by the massive undersea fault stretching all the way from northern California to the north tip of Vancouver Island. Scientists know that it produces massive quakes every few hundred years. There are records in Indigenous oral history of a huge earthquake around the year 1700, as well as written records from Japan of an “orphan tsunami” that year, which suggest Cascadia last ripped open 323 years ago. Scientists estimate the Cascadia subduction zone produces a quake every 200 to 800 years, so we’re within the window, with an estimated 10 per cent chance during the next 50 years. Add to that the risk of other tremors, including a crustal quake, and there may be a one-in-three chance of the city being violently shaken in the next 50 years.

The city’s report painted a bleak picture of what would happen: hundreds of buildings could collapse, and thousands more would be damaged beyond repair. The study estimated the city could lose nearly two-thirds of its entire building stock in either kind of quake—a civic disaster unmatched in modern Canadian history...

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