Living on the edge

Humans have to live with earthquakes. The danger is more severe in parts of our planet: those who live in the Ring of Fire know this only too well. But it’s still a shock each time the Earth quakes, sending all into a tizzy if only because of our fragility in the larger scheme of things. When around 15,000 earthquakes occur annually, as in this infamous ring of big tectonic plate movements, awareness and preparedness are the key to survival. It was a nasty temblor that jolted New Zealand awake with a mild tsunami, a double whammy we can do without as witnessed in the Fukushima disaster.

As Kaikoura town is being helped to recover, the Kiwis are possibly counting themselves lucky as this quake didn’t rip through the heart of Christchurch as the 2011 one did. Also, the tsunami was not beyond manageable proportions. Setting right the damage to infrastructure will be a challenge the world constantly faces. But man is so adaptable that he is not unused to undertaking these jobs.

A greater reason for the world to worry is 2016 is the unusually high seismic activity. Whether this has anything to do with the speed at which we are denuding the planet of natural resources, including extracting fossil fuels and shale gas, is something scientists must tell us about, much as they have done instructively with climate change thanks to global warming. How dwarfed man is by the gigantic forces of nature is a lesson in humility we all take from events over which we have very little control.