affreca | The Earth Shakes

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas celebration. And I hope nobody I know is effected by the quake. Part of me is fascinated; I am trained as a geologist and this was a huge earthquake in a complicated area. The rest is saddened. The reported death toll is 10,000 and expected to greatly rise as more areas recover enough to report. A million homeless. As a typical person, it hits the hardest for the place that I have actually seen. Phuket's (Thailand) hotels and beaches are gone. They make $4 billion a year on tourism there, and needed it. Well, another place I'm going to have to wait a few years before revisiting (I am waiting for the bad news about Guam now, since of the three liberty ports I have been to, one was bombed and the second just got flattened).