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Expect More Haiti-Scale Earthquakes in the Near Future
With so many people living in big cities today and an ever-growing world population, a recent study shows we can expect a major earthquake to devastate a major city once every decade.
Read original story in The Washington Post | Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2010

And now, some more of the story:

Last month's earthquake in Haiti devastated the capital of Port-au-Prince and killed more than 200,000. A story in today's Washington Post notes that, with more than 25 cities of one million-plus occupants built directly on fault lines that shake every 250 years on average, we can expect disasters on a similar scale every decade or so. Some of those cities: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Mexico City, Tehran, Istanbul, Tokyo, New Delhi, Kathmandu, Cairo, Manila, Lima, Osaka, Bogota, Dhaka, Jakarta, Karachi. "In 1800, there was just one city with more than a million people -- Beijing. Now there are 381 urban areas with at least 1 million inhabitants. Urbanization crossed a threshold last year when, for the first time, more people lived in city settings than rural ones," the Washington Post reported. "About 403 million people live in cities that face significant seismic hazard, according to a recent study by seismologist Roger Bilham of the University of Colorado."

Their emphasis.