As earthquakes go, it wasn’t exactly 1964, when a tidal wave swamped Port Alberni. It didn’t spur a reaction like the 2012 Haida Gwaii quake that prompted Tofino to sound its here-comes-Armageddon tsunami alarm and send the tourists scurrying for the hills.
It certainly wasn’t like the biggest shaker in relatively recent memory, the 6.8 magnitude “Rattle in Seattle” Nisqually earthquake of 2001. That one was so powerful that it cracked the dome of the capitol building in Olympia, damaged the control tower at Sea-Tac airport and shook bricks off chimneys in Victoria.
It also brained the Times Colonist’s Judith Lavoie with a falling ceiling panel that broke into a perfect vee over her head as she pounded out a story in the newsroom. Like George Chuvalo fighting Muhammad Ali, Judy’s knees buckled, but she wouldn't go down. She always was tougher than the rest of us. You want to knock her off her feet, you’d have to hit her with a 7.4 at least.
No, the Sidney Island temblor that left us trembling at 11:39 p.m. Tuesday was more like the Seinfeld quake (it happened during prime time) that bounced us off our couches in 2002. Or the less-powerful, less-memorable one that did the same as recently as April 2014. How soon we forget.
This is the problem. Whenever one of these things happens, we vow to be prepared for the next time — a resolution as sincere and quickly abandoned as the “Oh God, I’ll never drink again” prayer. On Wednesday, Custom Safety on Douglas Street was selling earthquake kits as fast as staff could build them. The latest event will boost business for a couple of months, then …
When the earth moved Tuesday night, did you have shoes by the bed to save you from walking on broken glass? Was the earthquake kit stocked and handy? Do you even have an earthquake kit? (I do. It’s a single malt.)
If you have earthquake insurance, do you even know what it covers? Many people are blissfully ignorant of how their policy actually works. When it says you have a 15 per cent deductible, that usually means on the total value of your coverage, not the damage to your home. So if your home and contents are covered for, say, $1 million, you would be on the hook for the first $150,000 worth of damage, no matter whether you’re looking at a cracked ceiling (as happened to some Victoria homes on Tuesday) or a pile of rubble.
Don’t blame your insurer, whose own costs shot up a couple of years ago for a couple of reasons.
First, reinsurance companies — those that provide coverage to insurance companies wanting to limit their own exposure — upgraded their assessment of the risk to Vancouver Island and increased their premiums accordingly. At the same time events like the devastating Christchurch, New Zealand earthquake of 2011 prompted B.C. insurance regulators to make sure companies buy enough reinsurance to cover all the losses should the Big One hit.
A contingent of local emergency-response officials came back from Christchurch — a seaside city whose architecture, infrastructure and population mirrored Victoria’s — with grim warnings. They spoke of unreinforced heritage buildings that crumbled, a deserted downtown full of unstable structures, and liquefaction that messed up underground services, meaning even those with undamaged homes were left sharing Porta Potties with the neighbours.
The essential message: Prepare to be totally on your own, without help. Because of our geographic isolation, we Islanders should keep enough food and water at home to sustain us not just for 72 hours but for at least a week.
Good luck with that. Remember the Blizzard of ’96? By day four Victorians were ready to go Lord Of The Flies on one another — and that was in a crisis that we knew would end as soon as the snow melted.
Lord knows we aren’t the most self-reliant bunch. Note that among the many, many people who called VicPD’s 911 line after Tuesday’s quake was one who said “OK I have my kids in the car and we’re evacuated. Where do you want us to go?”
Others had a bit of fun. A popular post-quake Internet meme carried the words VICTORIA EARTHQUAKE 2015/WE WILL REBUILD over a photo of a toppled patio chair. (The HarbourCats baseball team had the most opportunistic Twitter response to what was initially measured as a 4.3 magnitude event: “SHAKER SALE! Take 4.3 per cent off any merchandise or tickets in the store this morning.”)
Fun beats fear, but the bottom line is we all need to be prepared. So bolt those bookshelves to the wall. Fill milk jugs with water and stick them in your freezer. Too often we don’t act until we get hit over the head as a reminder.
