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I Made an Assumption I Should Not Have Made

Remember the Indonesian earthquake?

I have several different alerts set. One is for disasters in general. A few weeks ago one popped up for an earthquake in Indonesia. I thought it was no big deal. I think the first report was a magnitude 5.5 and later upgraded to 5.8.

Well, the earthquake was near the surface and they had had oodles of rain so the shaking was accentuated with many destructive landslides. A much bigger impact than I had envisioned.

Note to self: The circumstances of some disasters — housing, rain, geography, etc. — may be the determining factors on how much damage there is.
Eric Holdeman is a contributing writer for Emergency Management magazine and is the former director of the King County, Wash., Office of Emergency Management.