Doug and Dale Phillips were having their morning coffee and getting ready to head into Whitehorse when they heard a thump against their Marsh Lake home at around 7:45 this morning.

'It was like a gust of wind hit the house,' Doug told the Star.

In fact, after a very windy Monday night, the couple thought that's what had happened until Doug noticed the chandelier in the house continuing to sway and Dale noticed her chair shaking.

That's when they realized they were experiencing a moderate earthquake.

'We're tough up here,' Doug said with a laugh, pointing to the falling temperature, winds picking up and now an earthquake in the past day or so.

When the Phillips realized it was an earthquake, they stood up, with the tremor lasting about 30 seconds.

The quake, which had a magnitude of 5.7 on the Richter measurement scale, erupted near northwestern British Columbia, along the border with Alaska, about 156 kilometres southwest of Whitehorse, seismologist Natasha Ruppert said this morning from the Alaska Earthquake Information Centre.

The tremor was unusual in an area where there are two fault lines in the area: the Denali fault and the Queen Charlotte-Fairweather fault.

At about 4.7 kilometres deep, the quake was felt throughout southeast Alaska and the parts of the Yukon, Ruppert said.

'We have not received any reports of damage so far,' she added.

Wayne Merry of Atlin, B.C., about 100 kilometres to the east of the epicentre, said: It was a long, continuous shake with a quick vibration (lasting) about 20 seconds or so.''

News director Ron McFadyen of CKRW radio in Whitehorse said people described the tremor as the strongest in recent memory.'

His wife, Cathy, was in the shower in their basement when she felt the shower moving and had to put her hands to the side to steady herself,'' McFadyen said.

Phillips, a former Yukon Party cabinet minister, recalled a bigger earthquake a few summers ago which lasted about 10 minutes.

The quake was felt in many parts of Whitehorse and its periphery, including Riverdale, downtown and the Hidden Valley and MacPherson subdivisions.

In November 2002, an earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale occurred on the Denali fault, about 150 km south of Fairbanks and rattled windows in the Yukon. The quake, which occurred on a Sunday afternoon, was one of the most significant in the area since March 27, 1964. That Easter earthquake, in the Anchorage area, and its following tsunami killed 131 people.