A government seismologist says a magnitude 6.5 earthquake reported in British Columbia on Monday never happened.

Alison Bird of Natural Resources Canada says a computer glitch led to the erroneous report from the United States Geological Survey.

She says there was no earthquake 165 kilometres southeast of Kitimat on Monday afternoon.

Bird says the automated system isn't perfect at processing data.

She says it's possible that two small quakes at different locations were detected as one event.

Posts about the false alarm on the American agency's website have been deleted.