British Columbia conducts tsunami drill

British Columbia’s emergency officials ran a drill to see how the province would fare if a large-scale tsunami struck the West Coast.
The exercise, dubbed Pacifex11, was run through the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center on the morning of Mar. 23. Communities along the Pacific Coast, from California through Alaska, participated in the exercise.
In the exercise, officials ran through a scenario in which a magnitude-9.0 earthquake similar to the one seen recently in Japan struck off the coast of Oregon, causing a tsunami with waves up to two metres high up the coast.
Kelli Kryzanowski, B.C.’s manager of catastrophic disaster planning, told cbc.ca that Tofino, Ucluelet and Port Alberni would likely see destructive waves in this scenario. But due to the geography of the Juan de Fuca and Georgia Straits, it would not likely hit Vancouver.
“If it’s shaking for three to five minutes in our jurisdiction in B.C., we know that within 20 to 30 minutes we could see a wave generated,” she told cbc.ca. “So it’s incredibly important for people to pick themselves up and head to higher ground.”
Future versions of Pacifex11 will involve full-scale exercises in real-time using real people, including public evacuations, cbc.ca added.