My heart's in the Northwest and I'm hoping all my old friends are safe; assuming they are. I remember after the Loma Prieta quake in '88, every time I'd drive on the Alaskan Way Viaduct in Seattle I would think about the highway that collapsed in Oakland, that had precisely the same design. Glad to hear it didn't flatten this time.

We get lots of quakes here on the Big Island, since we have an active volcano. (Much like Iceland.) They're mostly small, from magma shifts. However, throughout history (and prehistory) there have been numerous major "slumps" in which large chunks of island fell into the ocean, causing tremendous earthquakes and local tsunami. (Kealakekua Bay, where Captain Cook landed and was later killed, used to be a gently sloping mountainside--you can still see the scar.) We're due for a huge slump any decade now.

Aloha,
Mark