Report outlines impact earthquake could have on Vancouver

A new report from the City of Vancouver and Natural Resources Canada has outlined how a 7.2-magnitude earthquake could impact Vancouver, and it highlights six neighborhoods in high-risk areas.

In the report, Vancouver’s West End, Yaletown, the Downtown Eastside, Kitsilano, Fairview, and Mount Pleasant have the highest risk of damage from a large earthquake.

The report also stated that if a large earthquake centred at the Georgia Strait were to occur, there would be over 1,300 casualties and over 6,000 privately owned buildings that would be damaged in Vancouver.

The co-author of the report says the economic impact on the city could be more than $17 billion, with a $30 billion loss provincewide.

“If we don’t fix these buildings, then when an earthquake happens, people are going to be out of those houses, those homes, and those buildings,” said Dr. Tiegan Hobbs, a seismic risk scientist with Natural Resources Canada.

“Everybody will be out all at once while we have to rebuild everything, as opposed to these programs where we might have to move people out to fix a building but we can do it in stages and work towards it slowly for many years or even decades.”

Hobbs said in the report that three problematic building types should take priority with the retrofitting process: older concrete highrises in the West End and downtown, and older brick and wood residential buildings.

While this retrofitting process is still in the works, Vancouver City Coun. Pete Fry says it will be important to secure funding from the provincial and federal governments as they map out a seismic risk-reduction strategy in the future.

“On receipt of the report, the next step would be to come up with a plan for how we can approach these risks in a sensible and measured way, recognizing that we already do have a crisis with housing and affordability. This is not an inexpensive undertaking, and if we want to replace these high-risk seismic buildings, it is going to cost a lot of money, and it’s going to take some time,” Fry said.

“It’s a complicated undertaking, and I hope that this also informs conversations not just here in the city of Vancouver but with the region, the province, and of course the federal government, because it is going to need an ‘all hands on deck’ approach, especially when it comes to private property.”

Hobbs says that while the numbers the report has outlined are “doom and gloom,” the odds of a large earthquake hitting the city within the next 50 years is around 5 per cent.

This report will be brought to Vancouver City Council in their next meeting on Tuesday.