Some residents in several parts of Quebec were jolted awake early Sunday morning by a minor earthquake.
Earthquakes Canada says the 4.6 magnitude quake, at a depth of 18 kilometres, happened around 5:45 a.m. The epicentre was located about 20 kilometres northwest of Drummondville and 40 kilometres south of Trois-Rivières.
“It was widely felt in the region, and we got some reports all the way down in Ottawa and Quebec City as well,” said Mareike Adams, seismologist with Natural Resources Canada.
Tremors were also felt from the Charlevoix and Bas-Saint-Laurent regions through the Montreal area, including the Laurentians and in the Outaouais.
Two CBC listeners from Lanoraie in the Lanaudière region phoned to say their homes were shaking for a few seconds and their dogs were reacting wildly to the tremors.
“For these kinds of events, it often feels sometimes like a really, really large truck or train goes by,” Adams said, adding no damage was reported from the quake.
While magnitude 4 earthquakes are relatively rare in eastern Canada, the Montreal area is located in the western Quebec seismic zone, where smaller events occur fairly often.
“This region includes Ottawa Valley, up to Montreal, Temiscamingue, Laurentians and eastern Ontario, so it’s a large seismic zone,” Adams said.
She said the region gets one earthquake approximately every five days, but the majority of those are very small and are not felt.
Earlier this week, an earthquake early detection system was activated in British Columbia to provide the public with a few seconds of warning ahead of a potentially harmful tremor.
Adams says that system will be activated in eastern Canada in the fall.