Hi again, Laura;
Yes, believe me, I understand. I have four kids myself.
However, you have to understand something about the news media: They frequently don't understand what they report. Based on the last 110 years of USGS data, we expect 13,000 earthquakes between 4.0 and 4.9 every year, worldwide. Those are mostly concentrated in the active earthquake zones, so saying "worldwide" is a bit misleading. However, at 13,000 per year, that is over 35 quakes per day!
What happens is we get a 'cluster' of quakes, and the media starts watching the USGS website, and then reporting everything they see. A 'cluster' in this case occurs because earthquakes are not 'regular'… they don't happen on a schedule. So we get a couple of quakes occurring soon after another, and pretty soon people are convinced that they are related (e.g., Haiti and Chile). Then they run to the USGS website, and see all these 4-pointers all over the map (not realizing that there are on average 35 per day) and panic.
In fact, the USGS is no longer reporting quakes below 4.5 outside of the U.S., unless they receive reports that it caused damage… there's just too many of them.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/topics/increase_in_earthquakes.php
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/eqstats.php
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/graphs.php
"Large Earthquakes" and California go together. We're much better prepared here (due to strict building codes) than Haiti was. The Haiti quake was about the same size as the 1989 Loma Prieta quake near San Francisco. But we had less than 100 deaths, compared to thousands in Haiti. Some of that is due to the fact that the epicenter of the Haiti quake was right under an urban area, but most of that is due to the fact that Haiti's building codes are essentially non-existent. A 7 pointer in LA, or San Francisco or Tokyo is not going to kill hundreds of thousands of people… just because those areas are prone to quakes, and build accordingly. Even the great quake in Chile will likely cause less deaths than the Haiti quake, because that area is prone to very large earthquakes. The largest earthquake ever recorded (9.5) was about 60 miles away from the 8.8 Quake in Chile.
Laura (guest) 16 Mar 2010 12:50
(account deleted)