A magnitude 6.4 earthquake that rattled Vancouver Island Friday afternoon was followed by dozens of aftershocks, and more is expected.

On Friday, the initial quake struck 175 miles northwest of Vancouver 12:41 p.m. local time.

So far, no damage has been reported, and there is little risk of a tsunami from the quake.

It was not a serious threat to the local area, because it was off the remote northern coast of the island, John Clague, a professor with Simon Fraser University's earth sciences department, told the Vancouver Sun.

If the epicenter was closer to a populous center, the quake could have caused similar destruction to one earlier this year in Christchurch, New Zealand, which was around the same size, Clague said.

We're just lucky this occurred in a remote area.

The Pacific Coast is Canada's most earthquake prone region, with some 1,000 tremors a year. There have been about 100 quakes of magnitude 5 or higher off the coast of Vancouver Island this year.

The same type of quake as Friday's is relatively common in Vancouver Island, revisiting the land every 10 years.

With this size of an earthquake, we can expect aftershocks with a magnitude of a five-range and would expect them to continue for several hours, if not a few days, said

John Cassidy, a seismologist with Natural Resources Canada.

Hundreds of aftershocks are likely to follow, according to Garry Rogers of the Geological Survey of Canada.

Each earthquake is unique and has it own aftershock sequence. Some have many thousands of aftershocks and some have only a few or none at all. In this case, we would expect to see some aftershocks, much smaller in size and they would decrease over time, some of which would be too small to be felt by people on land, Holli Bellavie the municipal administrator for Zeballos told the Associated Press in an interview.

The quake was felt as far south as in Seattle.

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