The Public Health Agency is planning a 2023 earthquake drill after an earlier pandemic drill was interrupted by COVID-19..“The Agency is actively conducting exercises that serve to test readiness for potential public health emergencies,” management wrote the House of Commons public accounts committee. They said planning was part of “continuous improvement.".According to Blacklock's Reporter, the Agency in 2019 drafted plans on what it would do in case of a global pandemic. “The exercise could not take place due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” said the report Government Response..“A large scale exercise involving a nuclear emergency was held in October 2021,” said the Agency. It did not elaborate on the results..“An exercise examining a catastrophic earthquake is planned for early 2023,” wrote managers. “Additional exercises spanning a variety of public health events are also under development.”.The Agency gave no reason for the timing of the quake drill. Fatal earthquakes are rare in Canada with a total five events in the past 400 years according to the Geological Survey of Canada..The worst, a magnitude 7.2 earthquake off Newfoundland & Labrador in 1929, triggered a tsunami that drowned 28 people, snapped undersea telegraph cables and damaged property from Cape Breton to Fredericton..The 2023 drill follows the Department of Natural Resources’ 2020 proposal for a multi-million dollar Earthquake Early Warning System with permanent installation of seismographs at seven cities: Victoria, Vancouver, Toronto, Kingston, Ottawa, Montréal and Québec City “with possible additional locations downriver from Québec City and upriver from Ottawa,” the department said..Sensors were to be installed in basements of existing office buildings though any structure would do, the department explained. “Structures may be buildings, garages, sheds, etcetera,” it said in a statement..The complete system was to be operational by 2024. No budget was detailed though the department earlier put costs of sensors at $2 million a year..The most severe earthquake in Canada, a nine-magnitude event off the British Columbia coast in 1700, is believed to have killed hundreds of First Nations coastal villagers and sent tsunami waves that crossed the Pacific to Japan. Lesser quakes included a 1946 event on Vancouver Island that claimed two lives by drowning and heart attack and a 1925 quake at L’île aux Lièvres, Que. blamed for six fatal heart attacks..Insurance brokers in 2019 testimony at the Senate banking committee said the likelihood of a major quake posed a financial risk especially in Ontario and Québec where few property owners, fewer than five percent, carry earthquake insurance. “I think it’s clear there is a potential risk,” testified Peter Braid, CEO of the Insurance Brokers Association of Canada..“If there is a significant seismic event in either British Columbia or in the Ottawa-Montréal-Québec City corridor we would be looking for an all-of-society approach to make sure probably rather devastating impacts to the economy could be responded to,” said Braid.
