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Media Contacts

Media Relations

Government Communications and Public Engagement
Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure
250 356-8241

Backgrounders

Facts about British Columbia's first full-scale earthquake and tsunami response exercise

Exercise Coastal Response

* Exercise Coastal Response is based on a magnitude 9.0 earthquake occurring off the shore of southwestern B.C. as a result of a rupture of the Cascadia Subduction Zone. The earthquake scenario will generate a tsunami impacting the west coast of Vancouver Island minutes after the initial shock.

* The exercise brings together some key stakeholder groups such as different levels of government, various jurisdictions in Canada and the United States, as well as a number of provincial ministries, First Nations, Crown corporations and first responders.

* The exercise is a mix of real-time activities and simulated situations involving functions such as emergency operations, logistics, medical care, mass care, public information and operational communications.

Exercise Pacific Quake

* Exercise Pacific Quake is a Canadian federal government earthquake exercise. Federal exercise play will include the local federal coordination departments, which have a presence in the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island, such as Canadian Coast Guard, Transport Canada, Public Health Agency of Canada and will extend to the Government Operations Centre in Ottawa.

Exercise Staunch Maple

* The Joint Task Force Pacific (JTFP), the lead Canadian military formation in British Columbia, has a range of activities planned, some of which are linked to Exercise Coastal Response activities located along the west coast of Vancouver Island.

Exercise Cascadia Rising

* Led by Northwest United States FEMA Region 10, this exercise includes most municipalities and counties in the western half of Washington and Oregon, as well as parts of Idaho.