Vadim, There are 7.0 quakes that have very few casualties, wasn’t there just one of that type in California? It just so happened that this one took place in a desperatley poor country with no real building codes in place which led to thousands of buildings collapsing as a result.
I once heard from a Rosh Yeshiva that the real danger of newspapers is their ability to make everything “rational” hundreds of thousands of people die because of the laws of geology. One need not take a lesson from it it was just a “natural occurence”.
Rashi and other Rishonim may have taught us that when Hashem brings tragedy upon the nations it is expressly so that we should get the message. But with our enlighted indset our vast knowledge of geology and gravity(the source of which is unknown and purely speculated upon) are able to “explain” these events as mere natural occurances.
We complain when disaster strikes. We ask why it happened, what did we do to deserve it?
Do we ever stop and think?
The Mesilas Yeshorim writes that those who do not posses the ability to contemplate bring tragedy upon themselves. First Hashem sends a small message those who are wise get it. Those who are not then need a slightly stronger one and it goes on and on.
Perhaps if we wanted to end such tragedys we would do the obvious. Perhaps it is time to say we don’t need any more wake up calls.
After September 11th a prominent Rav said in public. “I am not a navi I can not say specifically what brought about this tragedy, However I do know that we need to learn from it and each of us needs to make a Cheshbon HaNefesh. We each need to figure out what each of us as individuals must improve upon”
Perhaps a Tragedy of such magnitutde requires that those of us who are Mavir Sedra with Rashi need to be mekabel “Yishmuo V’Yiruo” as Rashi in this very week writes and understand that tetonic plates only move when Hashem tells them to and if these particular ones did not move for over 200 years till now it is for a reason and it’s time we stopped kidding ourselves about it.