Yukoners feel shakes from magnitude 5 earthquake near Alaska-B.C. border

From Whitehorse, to Carcross, Tagish and Squanga Lake, Yukoners felt the shakes from an earthquake near the Alaska-B.C. border Saturday night.

The magnitude five earthquake struck 104 kilometres west-southwest of Skagway, Alaska, and 211 kilometres southwest of Whitehorse around 9:32 p.m.

An hour following Saturday night's earthquake, there was a magnitude 3.4 aftershock.

Lindsay Waite-Schneider was inher cabin at Squanga Lake at the time of the earthquake.

"All of a sudden the cabin started creaking and the ceiling fan started to shake. I kept waiting for it to get worse but it just sort of rumbled on," she said.

Waite-Schneider said she knew it was an earthquake because she "vividly" remembers the 6.2 and 6.3 magnitude earthquakes that caused power outages and damaged buildings inYukon in 2017.

"Everyone else in the house [was] a little unsure at first. I kept saying 'do you guys feel that?'" she said of Saturday night's earthquake.

Other Yukoners said the earthquake rattled glass doors and causedglasses to start clinking.

One person in Whitehorse was quoted by VolcanoDiscovery as saying the earthquake "felt like kind of vibratey, like as though my dog was leaned against me scratching herself but it wasn't her."

Taimi Mulder, a seismologist with the Geological Survey of Canada, part of Natural Resources Canada, said the area where the magnitude fiveearthquake hit is a typical location for earthquakes.

"I'm not terribly surprised there was an event there."

According to Earthquakes Canada, the largest earthquake in this region was a magnitude 8.2 in 1899. More recently there was a 7.5 magnitude earthquake in 2013.