With two earthquakes in the news this week, I turned my attention once again to my dusty emergency preparedness kit sitting underneath the recycling at my back door.
When I returned to work at the paper in January, I planned to buy something new for the kit every payday. I printed out the list of things needed from the Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) website and felt quite proud of myself every time I checked something off the list.
But once I had the basics accumulated - food, water, a first aid kit, camp stove, candles, matches, a flashlight and radio - I lost my zeal for emergency preparedness.
I found other uses for my money, which wasn't hard to do, and my kit sat sadly unfinished waiting for me to remember it.
When I heard about the earthquake in Virginia and then the one in Peru this week, I remembered the fear that drove me to prepare in the first place - we are due for the big one!
In case you don't know, the Sun-shine Coast is due to be hit with an earthquake similar in size and destruction to the one that devastated Japan.
We sit along the Pacific Ring of Fire, a region of active underwater volcanoes and ever-shifting tectonic plates.
The Pacific Ring of Fire extends 40,000 km in a roughly semi-circular shape running from South America, passing our shoreline and carrying on to New Zealand.
The area we have to watch is the Queen Charlotte Fault on the west coast of the Queen Charlottes. The fault line has already generated three large earthquakes -a magnitude 7.0 in 1929, a magnitude 8.1 in 1949, which was Canada's largest reported earthquake ever, and a magnitude 7.4 in 1970.
Experts predict a much bigger quake is coming, a monster quake with a magnitude of around 9.0, as is evident in the history of this area every 200 to 800 years. The last big one is said to have shaken our area in the 1700s.
Fall out from the big one on the Coast would be serious, with a possible tsunami flooding all of downtown Sechelt and the obvious structural devastation a quake of that size would bring.
Because the Coast is so spread out, experts suggest residents be prepared to be self-sufficient for at least a week in the event of an emergency like a large-scale earthquake.
So, knowing all this, and having my attention brought to it again with the recently reported earthquakes, I have committed to start plugging away at getting my emergency preparedness kit up to snuff.
The SCRD has a wonderful list of preparedness tips on their website at www.scrd.ca, as well as a full emergency supply list, a grab-and-go kit list and special preparedness advice for the disabled.
Some things I still need to pack in my kit include pet food, extra keys for my car and my house, cash and a change of clothing and footwear for everyone in my family.
And I'm going out today after work to pick up an extra can opener, as all those flats of canned food stuffed in my kit won't be much good without a way to open them.
While the big one may be on its way, ultimately we don't have any control over it.
But rather than worry, I'm going to prepare, and I hope you will too.
