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Every year we hear the same thing, that, ‘Oh, the big waves are going to come, the big waves are going to come’

When the next megathrust quake hits, residents on the west side of Vancouver Island will barely have 20 minutes to get to higher ground.

“Every year we hear the same thing, that, ‘Oh, the big waves are going to come, the big waves are going to come,'” Peters says as she looks out on the Pacific Ocean. “I’m not really too worried about it actually happening. We’re not ready for it, but in a sense we are. We seem to be on the ball when it comes to evacuating the place.”

“Nobody [will be] left behind,” says Peters. “All the elders, the kids, even the dogs are all taken out of here.”

On Jan. 26, 1700 at about 9 p.m., a magnitude nine earthquake struck the Pacific coast, causing violent shaking for minutes that scientists believe was felt as far away as the Manitoba border. The shaking was followed almost immediately by a tsunami that legend and scientists say sucked everybody and everything along the outer coast into the ocean.

The stress builds up over hundreds of years and when it releases it releases in a megathrust earthquake

About nine hours later, a tsunami the height of a four-storey building hit the Japanese coast on Jan. 27, 1700, destroying all in its path.

It wasn’t until the late 1990s that scientists linked the tsunami in Japan to geologic reports of the earthquake off the Pacific coast in North America.

Scientists using earthquake mapping and profiling techniques now believe the ancient quake and tsunami are eerily similar to the magnitude 9.2 earthquake and tsunami that struck in the Indian Ocean on Boxing Day 2004, killing more than 250,000 people.