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A tsunami warning that was triggered by a magnitude 7.9 earthquake in Alaska has been cancelled in B.C.
Nuu-chah-nulth Nations and residents of the West Coast of Vancouver Island sought higher ground during the emergency. Leaders in coastal First Nations were being roused from their beds in the early hours of Jan. 23 to prepare for the evacuation of their people.
John Jack, a councillor with the Huu-ay-aht Nation posted a notice from the Alberni-Clayoquot Regional District on his Facebook Page. 
That nation’s communications team published the district’s evacuation plan on their Facebook page.
And Huu-ay-aht’s tiny sea-side community of Anacla was safely evacuated to the House of Huu-ay-aht, built on higher ground for exactly this circumstance. The population has a long memory having been devastated by a tsunami 300 years ago.
In Tla-o-qui-aht, the healing centre was opened for the communities of Tyhistaniis and Esowista where the ocean is only steps away from their homes.
In the remote community of Kyuquot, the phones were out. Relatives from the south island were phoning relatives in the north to alert them to the warning, but they were already heading to higher ground.
Rupert Wilson of Port Hardy was on Facebook sending his messages.
People in Port Alberni, at the end of he Alberni Inlet, were woken from their sleep, no stranger to tsunami warnings. Each month on a Wednesday at lunch they test their warning system, which blares instructions throughout the valley. Port Alberni has a history though, having suffered through a tsunami in the 1960s, also triggered by an earthquake in Alaska.
Hugh Braker, the director of Emergency Management for Tseshaht First Nation took the communication lead, updating the valley’s Facebook chatterbox site and his nation.
The warning systems began to wail in the darkness, leading one woman to comment on Braker’s post “Sounds so eeerrry.” People were evacuating to the sports multiplex and the Walmart.
By 4:28 a.m. however, the warning was cancelled and people were breathing a sigh of relief, and taking to Facebook to congratulate first responders for their handling of the situation. Some folks started to play the evacuation game “What did you grab?” with “15 grapes and a blanket” leading off.
Chief Councillor Greg Louie of the Ahousaht First Nation on Flores Island off of Tofino said on Twitter “Ahousaht Emergency protocols worked very well tonight”.