The area around the Indonesian island of Sumatra is one of the most earthquake-prone on Earth, and geologists have long predicted that a quake might one day completely destroy its port city of Padang.
On Wednesday, when people were at work and their children in school and the city center crowded, a vicious 7.6 quake came close. It rattled buildings as far away as Singapore and Malaysia. The final death toll is likely to be in the thousands.
An unknown number are trapped in the collapsed ruins of office buildings, hotels, hospitals and schools, but because of the damage and the difficult geography the Indonesian government is struggling to bring the heavy equipment needed to clear the debris.
The next day as 6.6 earthquake hit about 150 miles from Padang. There were apparently no deaths, but it didn't do much for the nerves of the survivors in Padang.
It was only in 2006 that an earthquake in the city of Yogyakarta killed 6,000. And 375 miles northwest of Padang was the epicenter of the 2004 undersea earthquake that set off the lethal tsunami that swept westward across the Pacific, killing 230,000.
On Tuesday, another earthquake -- unrelated except by accident of geography -- set off a tsunami that in successive waves washed over the shores of American Samoa, Samoa and Tonga. The Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii managed to give 10 minutes warning, not much of a head start to outrace waves 15 to 20 feet high -- some accounts say 35 feet -- that rushed as much as a mile inland.
The U.S. Navy arrived quickly. A final death toll will take some time because so many of the victims were swept out to sea.
Earthquakes are so lethal because generally they are so sudden. Volcanoes, which the area also has, and typhoon-driven floods -- a natural disaster currently afflicting the Philippines -- give warning.
There are obvious precautions -- move away or move to high ground. But earthquakes are inescapable in a part of the globe that is Earthquake Central. And the only predictability is that inevitably there will be another one.
The mystery is when.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)
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