Pachena Bay
Pachena Bay is located south of Bamfield in Pacific Rim National Park at the southern end of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. It was the location of a First Nation's village that was destroyed by a tsunami in 1700. Origin of name "This word is derived from the Nitinaht Indian name for the site of Port Renfrew, but by mistake, the anglicized name Pachena was applied to a point further up the coast that had a nearly identical configuration. Pachena in its original form means either 'seafoam' or 'foam on the rocks.' Pachena Bay adopted in the 5th Report of the Geographic Board of Canada, 30 June 1904, as labelled on British Admiralty Chart 592, 1861 et seq, and on John Buttle's "Map of the Country between Barclay Sound & Nanaimo" by the Vancouver Island Exploring Expedition, 1864 (plan 2T67). The Huu-ay-aht (Ohiaht) First Nation live here; they call this bay "Anacla." Huu-ay-aht First Nations Pachena Bay is home to the Huu-ay-aht First Nations village of Anacla, "which aboriginal oral history says was devastated when an ancient earthquake convulsed the West Coast of North America." The Huu-ay-aht First Nations is a First Nations band government based on Pachena Bay about northwest of Victoria, British Columbia on the west coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. The HFN is a member of the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council and is a member of the Maa-nulth Treaty Society. Cascadia earthquake On 26 January 1700, an earthquake, one of the largest earthquakes on record, ruptured the Cascadia subduction zone offshore from Vancouver Island to northern California, creating a tsunami that wiped out the village of Pachena Bay leaving no survivors. An estimate of how many generations had passed since the event — which can be traced back to a date range in the late 1600s or early 1700s, or which concur with the event's timing in other ways help pinpoint the timing. The Huu-ay-aht legend of a large earthquake and ocean wave devastating their settlements at Pachena Bay, for instance, speaks of the event taking place on a winter evening shortly after the village's residents had gone to sleep. Masit was the only community on Pachina Bay not to have been wiped out, as it sat on a mountainside approximately above sea level. Nobody else from Pachina Bay survived the event — Anacla aq sop, a young woman who happened to be staying at Kiix?in on the more tsunami-sheltered Barkley Sound at the time of the event, came to be known as the last living member of her community. Although residents still live primarily in lower-lying areas, they are evacuated to the administration building when a tsunami warning is issued; this is an interim step toward a longer-term plan which will eventually see the residents relocated to higher ground as well. In 1996, a team of researchers linked the orphaned 1700 tsunami in Japan with a magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami in North America in a Trans-Pacific reunion. Scientists "dated the earthquake to the