There is often a misconception that damaging, destructive or earthquakes
causing death are a fairly rare event occurring only several times
during the course of any given year. This is far from the case. The
following list gives of 16 earthquakes from January 1 through May 23
which have caused injuries of damage. This is an average of about
one every 9 days. Many locally damaging earthquakes are not recorded
in these initial lists (as can be seen from the report from India
Mar 13, 2001, included here to show that damaging or deadly earthquakes occur
locally which often do not make these lists). A truer estimate of
how often damage or casualties are caused by earthquakes is probably
about once a week or slightly more often than that.
Any earthquake of Mw>=6 occurring in a populated area is likely
to cause damage and many with Ms less than this do as well. About 150
earthquakes per year occur with Mw>=6. There have been 5 in the
past 5 days - in the Kuril Isl. (Mw 6.7); Java (Mw 6.3), Fiji (Mw 6.4),
Tanimbar Islands (Ms 6.1) and the Solomon Islands (Ms 6.4). It is not
uncommon for large earthquakes to cluster in time so this increase
in seismicity is not that rare.