Earthquake in Indonesia Also
Thursday, January 14th, 2010I don’t mean at all to denigrate that devastating quake that hit Haiti on Tuesday. As you might imagine, I’ve found nothing interesting (i.e. “different”) about that in any foreign press to pass on here. Then again, it’s hard to think of any aspect of a quake that can be out-of-the-ordinary interesting: it’s usually just a monochrome tragedy, as hordes of people either die or lose the majority of whatever they own.
Unless, perhaps, a quake hits somewhere else while the world remains preoccupied with an earlier one. Berlin’s Der Tagesspiegel reminds us that just yesterday a 6.2 Richter-scale earthquake hit just off the coast near the Indonesian town of Manokwari. We don’t know anything about damage or deaths yet, but that’s mainly because we’re talking about the western part of that huge island of New Guinea – it hit just above the big piece of land that looks like some animal’s head, you know the one I mean, the Vogelkop Peninsula.
We do know, however, that no tsunami-warning was given, even though the quake’s epicenter was in the ocean. Is that because there truly was no tsunami, or because the judgment was made that there are not enough genuine population centers in the area to make any such warning worthwhile?
