megathrust: shaken, not stirred?

It was a bit disconcerting, getting a frantic phone call asking if my family was all right - huh? earthquake in sumatra? tidal waves? since when?????

I remember bits of my geography lessons, where i heaved a huge sigh of relief seeing that Malaysia was not at risk of earthquakes, but Indonesia was due to its location above a tectonic plate/fault or whatever. Of course, I also remember the few rare occasions where tremors HAD been reported in Malaysia... but those were always tiny, and as a result of a quake with an epicenter nowhere close to home.

My sms'es to a few family & friends helped me get a better picture of what happened... and while I can rest easy that my family is fine, my heart goes out to the 53 (and counting) deaths from the northern states of Penang, Kedah & Perlis, including the island of Langkawi. ... Mithz ... A-A ... salehmo ... and others from that part of the country - I hope all is well for ya...

And.. well... I do like to surf /research stuff online, and this quake led me to discover some interesting site on earthquake monitoring, run by the U.S. and Australia - I bet there are others out there, but hey, let's not overload it :-)

I found the report on this earthquake (9.0 on the richter scale!) very informative and educational - did you know that it is the fourth largest earthquake in the world since 1900 and is the largest since the 1964 Prince William Sound, Alaska earthquake?

From the website, I also see that there have been a few more quakes in the same region, but about 6.0 or lower on the Richter scale... watch out for them aftershocks, people!!

Drop me a line, let me know y'all are alive and kicking!