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It's hard not to feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of Japan's earthquake disaster. And it comes on the heels of a devastating earthquake in New Zealand, which in turn came on the heels of the floods in Australia.

It's hard not to feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of Japan's earthquake disaster.

And it comes on the heels of a devastating earthquake in New Zealand, which in turn came on the heels of the floods in Australia.

The offshore quake that struck at 2:46 p.m. local time Friday was the biggest to hit Japan since record-keeping began in the late 1800s. It ranked as the fifth-largest earthquake in the world since 1900 and was nearly 8,000 times stronger than one that devastated Christchurch, New Zealand, last month, scientists said.

And, as with all events that affect people, I have no doubt that Whistler will reach out in its own way to help. An international destination, this community is also a melting pot gathering people from all walks of life and from many places in the world.

We've never seen images such as those of the murderous 33-foot high tsunami, its wall of water moving across the coastline of northeast Japan eradicating buildings, tossing vehicles and trains as if they were toys, destroying lives.

The final death toll from the 9.0 magnitude earthquake will likely not be known for weeks. As I write this I'm waiting for good news about the family members of corridor friends. Facebook is full of good wishes, hope, but also despair.

It's impossible not to think about an earthquake of that size hitting here. Would Tofino, a popular place for Whistlerites to escape to, survive?

Is 15 minutes enough time to flee from a devastating tsunami on the westcoast of Vancouver Island - that's all the time the people of Sendai had to get away - to realize the quake might be over but the danger wasn't.

Was it enough time for a mother to get her child from school and escape, enough time for a son to help his elderly mother?

The entire Pacific region is lined with subduction zones and like Japan, B.C. rests on one - the Cascadia.

What happened in Japan could easily happen here.

John Clague, a professor of earth sciences at Simon Fraser University, told The Province newspaper, "We can't predict when the next one will occur.... But I would say that they are inevitable..."

And, said Clague, like Japan, residents of B.C.'s coast would have about 15 minutes to escape a tsunami.

Exactly seven years ago I wrote a feature for Pique on the natural hazards in the Sea to Sky Corridor - it's a story I have never forgotten.

I think about it every time I drive the highway between Squamish and Vancouver because that stretch of road would be littered with landslides in a quake. I think about it as I pass the Barrier at Garibaldi - even though its last big slide was in 1855-56. That sent 25 million cubic metres of material hurtling down Rubble Creek at 70 kilometres an hour. That's enough debris to bury Whistler.

Mt. Meager, which experienced a massive slide last year, is another area prone to release should it be shaken by an earthquake - indeed the area around it is known as the landslide capital of Canada. And, of course, there is Whistler's own Fitzsimmons slip.

Yet of all the information I wrote it is Squamish engineer Frank Baumann's words which have stayed with me: "We can't stop natural events but you can stop them from being disasters.

"That is the key thing and it is what civilized nations do."

I've always held to these words but Japan's experience has made me realize they are only true up to a point, for no other country takes earthquake preparedness more seriously, no country has such strict seismic regulations - and the Japanese have a state of the art tsunami warning system - indeed they gave us the word tsunami.

We cannot compare our state of readiness to theirs and yet B.C. faces just as real a threat. It's clear the damage, though devastating, would have been far worse if not for the stringent building codes in Japan.

As coincidence would have it, B.C just hosted the largest earthquake preparedness exercise in its history in January.

However, Canada has yet to conduct a national study to measure the potential impact of a major earthquake.

According to Maclean's magazine, a U.S. Geological Survey study carried out last decade to gauge the costs should a large quake strike Los Angeles found that if a quake hit at 2 p.m. on a weekday there would be between 3,000 and 18,000 fatalities, as many as 268,000 injured and up to US$250 billion in damages. While Vancouver is smaller, the findings are alarming.

Political leaders need to consider what more has to be done to prepare B.C. for the Big One. And every one of us needs to ensure that we are ready too - that means keeping in a place you can reach a battery-powered radio and three days food and water at the very least.

It also means having a plan in place to look after our guests and make sure that if visitors ask questions in the wake of Japan's earthquake about B.C.'s readiness we have answers. The last thing we need is earthquake aversion.