For a small indication of what the people in Japan have been enduring, take a gander at this chart of global seismic activity from the U.S. Geological Service. You can find the 9.0 quake that rocked the nation on March 11 at 05:46.
Fear and Trembling
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Sam Sawyer, S.J., editor-in-chief of America Media, returns to “Preach” to discuss his series of homilies for Advent, which aim for greater cohesiveness compared to typical stand-alone Sunday homilies.
Experienced foster parents often say two things: Foster care reveals things that are true of every parenting relationship. And fostering is intensely, inherently pro-life work that should be much more vigorously supported and promoted by the Catholic Church.
“What I’d like to see is the breaking down of this notion that there are the professional Christians—who are the priests, the bishops, the religious and many lay people—and the recognition that we’re all part of this together.”
Pope Francis has announced he will travel to the French island of Corsica on Dec. 15, visiting France just a week after the scheduled reopening of Notre Dame that he will not be attending.
And from the list on the linked page there seems to be a constant movement of the plates in the area of the original quake and a couple dozen or more of 6.0 quakes which were the size of the Christchurch quake since the 9.0 quake off the coast of Honshu. My guess is that we will learn a lot more about the effects of earthquakes and the potential damage depending upon the distance from the epi-center.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/events/japan-quake-2011/beforeafter.htm