THUNDER BAY – NEWS – At about 5:38 PM on Tuesday, many people across Thunder Bay heard or felt a large boom. Immediately across social media people started asking each other what happened.
It turns out incident was from blasting at a pit site behind the Terry Fox Lookout on Copenhagen Road.
The blast actually registered as if it were a 2.1 magnitude earthquake on Natural Resources Canada’s Earthquake monitoring website.
Globally there are over one million seismic events of that magnitude annually. Seismic activity of that level is felt slightly by some people but does not do damage to buildings.
What some people saw was a large “mushroom” cloud, which was visible near the blast as well as from places like Waverly Towers in Thunder Bay.
One question many people have over the incident is what or why there was no prior warning to the public about the magnitude of the blasting.
It was felt across the city and caused many people concern. Some thought it sounded at first like a plane crash, or a major train derailment.