Wednesday July 30, 2025 | VICTORIA, BC [Posted at 11:46 am PT]
by Mary P Brooke | Island Social Trends
Today BC Premier David Eby said about the province’s warning system, that the “system worked as expected”.
Addressing media from the LNG facility at Kitimat, BC, he added: “It was a good trial run for us.”
Eby also said that tsunamis are a “challenging problem” — his first impression when he heard about the quake was that impact in BC could be minimal given the location of the quake (off the coast of Russia).
Yesterday’s quake showed “just how unpredictable these can be”, said Eby. “We could see a significant impact here in BC and people need to be prepared. We didn’t see a huge impact here in BC but we could have,” the premier said.
He was briefed shortly after the alert went out last night. The quake occured around 6:45 pm PT.
People who have signed up for alerts on their cell phones did seem to get notification on Tuesday evening. For west shore communities (Langford and Colwood) that alert came in around 8:06 pm PT (and was cancelled around 7:13 am on July 30).
Eby said today that he understood the potential tsunami event to be “low risk but there was a risk and we needed to get people off the beaches and shorelines”.
“We were prepared for a more significant impact if that had happened,” said Premier Eby.
Alert had become an advisory:
At one point on Tuesday evening, the tsunami alert for BC’s outer west coast was upgraded to a tsunami advisory (both of those are below a tsunami warning).
See: July 29, 2025 – Earthquake and tsunami profile
Waves were expected at Tofino:
Waves of less than 1ft (0.3m) are expected to reach Tofino at 11:30 pm PT this evening.
As waves reach the BC coast, expect multiple waves over time, says Emergency Info BC. Stay out of coastal waters & away from beaches & harbours.
===== RELATED:
NEWS SECTIONS: EARTHQUAKES | EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS