Day of Emergencies

Wednesday was a day of minor emergencies for me, with my first ever earthquake experience followed by a late night fire alarm in our apartment building.

I was in Toronto attending a training course at Mercedes HQ and a magnitude 5.0 earthquake hit central Canada, rattling buildings from Sudbury to Quebec City, and as far south as New York City. The epicentre of the quake was in Quebec, about 500 kilometres from where I was situated, and struck at 1:41 p.m. EDT.

There have been two recorded earthquakes with a magnitude over 6.0 in the Western Quebec seismic zone: a 6.1-magnitude quake in 1935 and one measuring 6.2 in 1732. An earthquake with a magnitude of 5.0 is considered to be a moderate one but it can cause major damage to poorly constructed buildings over small regions. At the most, it should cause only slight damage to well-designed buildings. As Scott M commented it was enough to rattle the ice in your drink. From my perspective, my chair and desk quivered with the blinds in the room shaking on the third floor, but what was interesting was that no-one reacted with an emergency procedure. So much for being prepared for earthquakes. Anyway I survived to tell the tale.

I then flew back to Vancouver that afternoon, returning home and that night we were woken by the building's fire alarm at midnight. This meant that we had to rush out of the apartment down eleven flights of stairs and stand outside in our PJs. As you can see from my photo, the fire firefighters turned up and soon realised that it was a false alarm, allowing us to return to bed.