What the heck is going on with our planet? Why does there seem to be so much earthquake activity? There have been many periods in the Earth's history when earthquake activity has taken place. We can tell this by several means. One way is checking the strata. As we dig down we see layers in the dirt that indicate the different events that have occurred. Even without this type of clue, we have found found indications of past volcanic activity. Some of this has been in the form of ancient buried cities, cities that were buried in volcanic ash and magma. One has just to check out Pompeii to see what I am talking about. Here is a city that was completely covered by ash and magma from Mt. Vesuvius in Italy. It all happened so fact that the shapes of the people who were covered, were preserved by the covering. It is very sad to see, what look like statues of people in different positions trying to protect themselves and their loved ones, and realize that these are not statues but sort of a death mask of their entire bodies.

In 1883 there was a tremendous volcanic eruption. It came from the Krakatau Volcano in Indonesia on August 26. The eruption. was so powerful that the event is recognized as one of the most catastrophic natural disasters in history. But what made this little known volcano so famous, or should I say infamous? It was the huge scale of the event. The volcano sent fine ash as far away as New York City, a location that was over 3,000 miles away. The explosion itself could also be heard 3,000 miles away. Just imagine, if you can, how any explosion could be heard for such a distance. Then there were the tsunamis Some of these tsunamis were 120 feet high and devastated the Sunda Strait of Java and Sumatra Islands. These tsunamis reached all the way to the Britain, and were seen in the both the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean.

Of course these pale in comparison to the recent volcanic activity in the Indian Ocean that created tsunamis that killed about 250,000 people. I think the fact that the volcanic explosion was under the water and also the fact that the population in the area has increased dramatically, accounted for the tremendous amount of loss of life. This eruption. may indeed have taken place over the same tectonic plates that the Krakatau eruption took place over, even though Krakatau was above the water.

California in the USA is an area that is very active. If one looks at a map of the area showing recent earthquakes you will see about 50 or more for the week. Thank God that most of them are so small that people don't even notice that they have taken place. There is always the chance of the big one however, as witnessed by past quakes in the area that have taken down roadways and destroyed property. An example of a small quake that happened recently in the area is a 1.9 magnitude quake that was 3 miles from Avenal, California. This quake struck on January 28, 2005 at 2:48 A.M.

Recent Quakes
Picture Source: USGS

The Earth is very volatile. Earthquake activity is going on all over the world. It is very scary to look at a map of recent world activity and see that no area is safe. I have included a world map from the U.S. Geological Survey that shows quakes world wide for approximately the last 30 days from when I wrote this article. The colors represent the depths that the eruptions took place.

One can not help but notice the massive amounts of eruptions that have occurred. around the Pacific Rim. That is the area that runs up the west coast of the U.S., then across the ocean and down past Australia. It looks like that area covers about half of all the eruptions that occurred world wide. But no area is safe. In the past six months there have been about 20 quakes in the southern states in the U.S. Florida seems to be one of the exceptions along with Texas. As an observer of history and of the past tragedies that have occurred in and around the Indian Ocean, it seems to me that this is one of the most dangerous areas to live in, in the world, for volcanic activity.

In the U.S., it seems that the safest place to be, if you are worried about earthquakes, is southern Texas near the Rio Grande River. This is not to say that some other type of disaster won't strike you down there, but your chances of being in an earthquake there are the slimmest.

So as long as this Earth of ours is the beautiful place that it is, the core of the Earth will have to be hot and the pressure will have to relieve itself somewhere from time to time as will the pressure from plates pushing against each other. So I guess this is just one of the hazards that we have to live with.