There were no reported injuries as the result of this morning’s two large earthquakes that shook southwest Yukon.

Two Whitehorse schools and the school in Ross River were kept closed until a structural engineer could inspect them.

Power was knocked out to some 8,000 customers after safety mechanisms tripped off the Whitehorse substation.

Representatives of the Yukon government, Yukon Energy and the City of Whitehorse all indicated late this morning inspections of their primary infrastructure have not turned up any issues so far.

Students at Ecole Whitehorse Elementary School were kept outside until the engineer gave the OK for them to return to class just before 10 a.m.

Elijah Smith Elementary School was still closed late this morning, as was the Ross River School.

Concerns over cracking and structural integrity also closed down the Lynn Building on Steele Street. It was still closed early this afternoon.

Some Whitehorse businesses like Riverside Grocery and the Lumel Studios glass posted pictures on Facebook of goods that had fallen from shelves.

Everybody was talking about the earthquakes this morning, the first one occurring at 5:31 and the second one at 7:18.

Seismologist Taimi Mulder of the Geological Survey of Canada said this morning from her office in Sidney, B.C. the first quake measured 6.2 and the second one measured 6.3.

Both were south of Haines Junction and west of Skagway, and relatively shallow at 10 kilometres below the surface, she said.

Mulder said a 6.2 and 6.3 are at the beginning of the level where you would expect to see relatively minor damage, such as dishes falling off shelves and such.

The southwest Yukon is no stranger to seismic activity, and has seen 13 quakes of a substantial magnitude since 1899, including this morning’s, she said.

Haines Junction resident Wolf Reidl said this morning he was living in Haines Junction in 1979 when there was a 7.2 or 7.4 quake in the region. Today’s was not as bad, but still significant, he said.

“It woke us up,” Reidl said. “I rattled us around in the bed and it stopped the pendulum clock in the house but that was about it.”

Richard Graham of the City of Whitehorse said late this morning staff have conducted inspections of critical infrastructure like pump houses and such, but have not seen any damage.

Both the Robert Campbell Bridge and the Millennium Bridge have been inspected and given the all-clear, he said.

Graham said all the major city buildings have been inspected and staff were moving onto the smaller buildings.

“At this point, we are actually looking pretty good,” said the acting director of infrastructure and operations.

He said there was some sloughing along the clay cliffs across from the Canadian Tire store, but an inspection indicated very little had actually come down.

Janet Patterson of Yukon Energy said staff have checked the major infrastructure and equipment at the Whitehorse, Aishihik and Mayo generating facilities and did not find anything of concern.

The first quake knocked out the entire substation at the Whitehorse Rapids Dam, she said.

“We lost power because our Whitehorse substation tripped off,” she said. “It tripped off essentially to protect itself ... so that there would not be any significant damage.”

Power was lost to the downtown, Riverdale, Arkell, Granger, Carcross, Teslin, Tagish and the Southern Lakes.

Carla Howard of ATCO Electric Yukon said 8,000 customers lost power but 3,600 had it restored by 6:30 a.m., and everybody was back on 7:15.

But the second quake at 7:18 shut down a portion of the substation that resulted in power being lost to the communities south of Whitehorse until 8:03, she explained.

Problems with back-up diesel generation prolonged the outage in Teslin but power to the community was restored shortly after 10 a.m.