Even though earthquakes are far less common in Canada than other natural disasters, it's important to include them in your disaster planning. They happen with little to no warning, so you need to be ready to respond quickly.

To understand your coverage for earthquakes and other natural disasters, review your insurance policies and reach out to your Gallagher broker with questions.

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Canada's earthquake risk

While Canada isn't known for being prone to earthquakes, Public Safety Canada reports that each year Canada experiences more than 50 earthquakes strong enough to be felt, and sensors record 1,400 smaller ones.

The West Coast and St. Lawrence Valley are the regions with the greatest risk of a major earthquake.

  • The Queen Charlotte-Fairweather Fault extends more than 1,200 kilometers, from off the shore of Vancouver Island to the Fairweather Range in southeast Alaska. The fault is where the southeast-moving North American tectonic plate and northwest-moving Pacific plate slide against each other, sometimes triggering earthquakes — including Canada's largest recorded earthquake in 1949, which had a magnitude of 8.1.
  • While earthquakes are less likely in eastern Canada, the region has several earthquake zones unrelated to tectonic plate activity, including the St. Lawrence Valley through Ontario and western Quebec.

Natural Resources Canada is developing a national earthquake early warning (EEW) system that will send an alert moments before an earthquake, so people can take immediate steps to protect themselves.

Make sure your phone can receive emergency alerts

The National Public Alerting System sends geo-targeted emergency alerts. To make sure your mobile phone can receive them, test your phone's compatibility at Alert Ready.

Understanding how the Richter Scale rates earthquake strength

Since the Richter magnitude scale was first developed in 1935, it's been adopted globally for expressing the strength of earthquakes. It's a base-10 logarithmic scale — each order of magnitude is 10 times stronger than the previous one. So an earthquake that measures seven on the Richter scale is 10 times stronger than one that measures six.

Magnitude Description Effect
Less than 2 Micro Not felt
2-3 Very minor Not felt but recorded
3-4 Minor Often felt, no damage
4-5 Light Shaking observed
5-6 Moderate Some damage
6-7 Strong Damage over 160 km area
7-8 Major Serious damage over wider area
Greater than 8 Great Serious damage over several hundred kilometers

Resources for earthquake preparedness

Bookmark these recommended information sources to help prepare for and recover from an earthquake. These resources aren't affiliated with Gallagher.

Earthquake resources

Disaster resources

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