Certain areas of Metro Vancouver are not ready for a major earthquake, a UBC expert on earthquakes and civil engineering has said.

Carlos Ventura, a professor of civil engineering at UBC, told the Straight that the City of Vancouver has “very good by-laws” to enforce earthquake provisions in building codes.

But outside of Vancouver, Ventura added, “There are a number of buildings that are not designed according to standards because they are not necessarily designed by structural engineers.”

It is these areas that Metro Vancouver really needs to worry, he said, where provisions of building codes are not always strictly enforced.

Ventura declined to specify which cities he was referring to, claiming that he was not up to date on exactly how each municipal government is attempting to address such concerns.

Ventura’s comments came after he was contacted by the Straight on the urging of Michael Bostock, an associate professor of earth and ocean sciences at UBC.

Bostock told the Straight that in historical terms, Vancouver is due for a major earthquake.

“Large earthquakes occur with a characteristic recurrence interval,” he said. For the Cascadian subduction zone—on which Vancouver sits—that characteristic time is approximately 500 years.

The last Cascadian megathrust earthquake was in 1700, Bostock continued, so in terms of statistical averages, we could be getting close.

“If the past is a guide—and it is the best guide we’ve got—in the next two, three, 400 years, the probability of a large earthquake is very high.”

On April 14, the Los Angeles Times reported on a study conducted by several national and state-level geological research groups.

According to the Times, that study found that the chance of a magnitude 7.5 or greater earthquake striking California in the next 30 years is 46 percent.

Bostock explained that although Vancouver would not feel that quake, the study is important for Canadians because Vancouver sits on a plate boundary which is similar to the San Andreas Fault, which is the fault line discussed in the California report.

On April 3, the Straight ran a story on a damaging report about the state of emergency preparedness in Vancouver’s school system. That report revealed that the Vancouver school system has not had an emergency-preparedness coordinator for at least 10 years.