3 strong earthquakes strike off the coast of Vancouver Island

A few residents of Vancouver Island and even the coast of mainland B.C. may have felt a little shaking on Sunday night.

That shaking would have been caused by a trio of relatively powerful earthquakes struck off the coast of Vancouver Island.

The earthquakes were in a close cluster about between 197 and 223 kilometres west of Port Hardy, all happening within 45 minutes of each other.

First, there was a magnitude-6.6 tremor at 10:39 p.m., which was measured with a depth of 11 km.

That quake, measured 218 km west of the island, was followed 37 minutes later by a magnitude-6.8 tremor, which had a depth of 10 km.

Finally, a third seismic event, just six minutes later, reached magnitude-6.5 on the Richter Scale and was also measured at a depth of 10 km.

Prelim M6.6 Earthquake Vancouver Island, Canada region Oct-22 05:39 UTC, updates https://t.co/6lqYoLl1L3

— USGS Big Quakes (@USGSBigQuakes) October 22, 2018

Prelim M6.8 Earthquake Vancouver Island, Canada region Oct-22 06:16 UTC, updates https://t.co/pJAofbfief

— USGS Big Quakes (@USGSBigQuakes) October 22, 2018

Prelim M6.5 Earthquake Vancouver Island, Canada region Oct-22 06:22 UTC, updates https://t.co/d9rQfY9qqn

— USGS Big Quakes (@USGSBigQuakes) October 22, 2018

A series of three aftershocks measured between magnitude-4.3 and magnitude-4.9 followed the initial three earthquakes as well.

No tsunami warning was issued and the despite the quakes being powerful, they were far enough from land that they caused very little concern.

Sunday night’s seismic activity produced the largest earthquakes in B.C. since the magnitude-7.8 earthquake in Haida Gwaii in October 2012.