Earthquake impacts

What you need to know

As part of our ongoing efforts to reduce and understand our risk to earthquakes, we've performed a seismic risk assessment for Vancouver’s buildings.

Seismic risk areas
Seismic risk assessment
Related work

Our earthquake impact analyisis is part of a larger effort to develop policies, in partnership with the community and the Province, to reduce risk in our buildings. This is the first step of a multi-year process.

Earthquake risk: concentration of damage to buildings

Modelled scenario: magnitude 7.3 earthquake in the Strait of Georgia

This map is based on a simulated magnitude 7.3 earthquake, located about 30 km west of Vancouver at a depth of 5 to 10 kilometres. The map shows the potential concentration and severity of damage to buildings as a result of this earthquake scenario.

This map does not include damage to other types of infrastructure that may impact homes and buildings. Damage is possible across Vancouver and residents everywhere should take steps to prepare their homes and workplaces for earthquakes.

Earthquake risk map (493.72 KB)

Download the detailed earthquake risk map.

Vancouver is vulnerable to many different types of earthquakes. Earthquake science and modelling in this region continues to evolve providing more opportunities to get better prepared.

This is a single scenario that allows us to plan for earthquakes, but it is not a prediction of the actual earthquake we will face. This mapping only considers building damage, and does not reflect social impacts, infrastructure risk, emergency response, loss of life, or economic and recovery impacts.

There is strong potential to reduce risk to buildings and our community. We're learning from other cities like San Francisco, Seattle, Wellington, and Christchurch about different risk reduction strategies. We're working with experts and other levels of government to evaluate a range of policy options and to advocate for incentives and investment in earthquake resilient buildings and infrastructure.

We'll continue to update this page with new information about risk, and status of policy development and consultation.

Seismic risk assessment

Process

We've partnered with world-leading experts to develop a full citywide and neighbourhood-scale assessment of seismic risk, with an initial focus on the possible damage to different building types in different areas of the city. This modelling is focused only on general buildings types and does not reflect building-specific engineering analyses.

Experts at Natural Resources Canada, the University of British Columbia, the structural engineering community in Vancouver, and many others have helped us to use the Global Earthquake Model’s OpenQuake platform to help us understand our risks.

First scenario

We've modelled a magnitude 7.3 earthquake in the Georgia Straight. This type of earthquake, with its epicentre closer to Vancouver, is expected to have a bigger direct impact to our city than greater magnitude earthquakes that occur further away. Learn more about our seismic hazard

This work continues, and we will continue to refine and expand our modelling. Collecting and sharing this information helps us all make informed decisions about how to better prepare to recover from an earthquake.
Findings
Our modelling of a Georgia Strait magnitude 7.3 earthquake preliminarily shows:
- Many commercial buildings, including neighbourhood retail, downtown offices, and industrial buildings are severely impacted
- Damage to single family homes is not likely to result in severe injuries or fatalities, however, even with lower levels of damage the cost of repairs and reconstruction is expected to be significant for home owners
- Older multi-family residential and commercial buildings constructed of concrete, brick, and wood account for the vast majority of casualties and severely damaged buildings
- More than 10,000 of the 90,000 buildings in Vancouver would be unusable for an extended time; more than 4,000 of those buildings would likely require demolition
- More than 150 buildings would likely collapse
- Large sections of downtown, the West End, and the Downtown Eastside would be heavily damaged and need to be cordoned off, leaving them inaccessible for months or even longer
- Buildings and businesses located along commercial corridors would suffer significant damage, slowing response and delaying recovery
- Nearly half of the city’s residents would be displaced for more than a month, with almost 150,000 for more than three months
- More than 11,500 people are likely to be injured, and of those more than 1,100 could be severely injured or die
- Financial losses from building damage alone are estimated to be in the order of at least $8-billion in Vancouver.
Next steps

We're working with the Seismic Policy Advisory Committee to assess a range of risk reduction options, and to model the potential to enhance safety and recovery of buildings. We're learning from other cities and will consult with stakeholders on options for our unique conditions.

We're also working with regional partners to better understand the vulnerability of other infrastructure, to inform a comprehensive approach to resilience and earthquake risk reduction. This regional project is expected to be completed in June of 2021.

Related work

This work comes out of the 2013 Earthquake Preparedness Strategy. It identified 55 key tasks, of which 47 are in progress or completed. This analysis is part of one of those tasks.

It is also situated within a larger process to advance citywide resilience, the forthcoming Resilient Vancouver strategy.