Just over two weeks ago, there was strong shaking, the strongest Ottawa has ever experienced, a seismologist said yesterday.
“Here’s the bottom line. The bad news is that this is the strongest shaking in Ottawa’s history, and this goes back about 200 years,” said Dr. John Adams in a public presentation at uOttawa yesterday.
The good news that current design provisions protect against quakes of that magnitude.
Showing a chart, he said buildings in Ottawa “would have had to be shaken about 10 times stronger in order to get to significant … damage,” he said.
“We would have seen more damage if that earthquake had gotten bigger and bigger, but modern buildings are designed for a very high level of protection,” he said.
The earthquake was felt by an estimated 19 million people, as far away as Washington, D.C. and Kentucky.
