THE alarm sounded late in the day, its wailing shattering a beautiful afternoon at the National Earthquake Center of the Meteorology & Geophysics Agency (BMG). However, no one was taken by surprise. That afternoon they were indeed anticipating an earthquake, sometime after the earth had shaken earlier in Enggano, Lampung, at noon.

So, they were a bit surprised when they checked their computer monitors. The quake which took place on Monday at 3:22p