Earthquake Rattles Vancouver Island Residents

An earthquake of magnitude 6.6 has been recorded off Canada's Vancouver Island.

The Pacific Ocean quake was followed by two aftershocks of 5 and 4.2 magnitude, although there were no reports of injuries or damage to property and no risk of a tsunami.

Some 650 people reported feeling the quake from as far away as Kelowna, south-central British Columbia, and in suburbs in Seattle.

Port Hardy resident Jennifer Nickerson said the quake caused the fish tank water in her hotel to rock, while Tim Stewart, a former chief of police from Vancouver, said his chandelier began swaying.

It was the tenth significant quake in the Ring of Fire region in the last two weeks. The ring is a horseshoe-shaped area of ocean trenches and volcanic belts around the edges of the Pacific Ocean running 40,000km (25,000 miles) from New Zealand to Chile.

Some 90% of the world's earthquakes occur in the region due the edges of several tectonic plates meeting along the ring.

A few days ago two quakes of magnitude 7.5 and 6.6 were recorded off Papua New Guinea and a 7.2 magnitude quake was recorded in the state of Guerrero, 265km (164 miles) southwest of Mexico City.

Before those, three quakes of 6.6, 7.4 and 7.6 magnitude were recorded off the Solomon Islands.

Residents of California live along the San Andreas Fault, the stretch of the ring where the Earth's Pacific Plate and North American Plate meet.

California has long feared The Big One, a hypothetical quake of at least magnitude 8, expected to occur along the San Andreas fault sometime in the next 30 years.