January 7, 2005

The Cultural and Historical Significance of the Tsunami Disaster

By DAVID GLENN

The terrible Lisbon earthquake of 1755 inspired poems, novels, and decades of theological debate. The Managua earthquake of 1972 is widely believed to have hastened the end of Anastasio Somoza Debayle's regime in Nicaragua. (Somoza diverted international relief aid into private bank accounts; citizens were not amused.) Last month's Indian Ocean tsunamis will almost certainly have long-term repercussions of their own. Jelle Zeilinga de Boer, a professor of earth science at Wesleyan University,