Chris Stedile
Castlegar News
An Idaho earthquake last week sent tremors through the region and up into Castlegar.
Several residents described feeling the quake, which struck Thursday at approximately 10:40 p.m. but no damage was reported and no injuries sustained.
According to the government website Earthquakes Canada, the resulting earthshaker came in at 4.2 magnitude. It is uncommon for quakes under magnitude five to cause any significant damage.
One Kootenay resident felt the shaking and described the quake as a “weird sensation.”
“I was drifting off to sleep and all of a sudden I heard a noise that woke me up,” said Robson resident Michelle Potter.
“It turned out to be coming from necklaces hanging on my bedroom door. I felt a weird sensation, at first I thought it was my heart that was pounding. Then I figured out that it was actually my bed moving. It was such a weird sensation to be feeling movement like that.”
Earthquakes in this region are not very common but they have been known to happen.
This quake was only one of two that hit Idaho that night. The first struck closer to 8 p.m. but was not felt as heavily in the Kootenay area, according to reports.
The largest tremor seen by this area was 6.1 magnitude back in 1918.
— With files from Betsy Kline