“A 7.7 is a big, hefty earthquake. It’s not something you can ignore,” Gerard Fryer, senior geophysicist at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center told n CNN International.
He explained that the latest tremor had occurred partly under an island, but mostly under shallow water.
“I think we have to be thankful it happened where it did,” Fryer said. “If that were a heavily populated area, it would have caused significant damage.”
“It definitely would have done significant damage if it had been under a city,” the geophysicist added.
The Globe and Mail newspaper reported that the US Coast Guard in Alaska was trying to warn everyone with a boat on the water to prepare for a potential tsunami, the report said.
The Canadian paper also quoted Lieutenant Bernard Auth of the Juneau Command Center as saying that the US Coast Guard was working with local authorities to alert people in coastal towns to take precautions.
The earthquake reading was based on the open-ended Moment Magnitude scale used by US seismologists, which measures the area of the fault that ruptured and the total energy released.
The Queen Charlotte Islands, which are also known by their official indigenous name of Haida Gwaii, comprise about 150 islands located north of Canada’s Vancouver Island. Their total population is about 5,000. The Haida people make up about 45 percent of the total population.
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