I ma a geology major, and stuff like this has happened for millions and millions of years. It will happen again. The Earth is covered with plates that move constantly. Google "plate tectonics" and look at how drastically the Earth has changed in the past. All those plates moving are going to cause quakes and there's nothing we can do to stop it. The geological time scale is huge (4.6 billion years), that to us these large destructive events seem rare, but they have been happening all along.


The big difference now is that the human population is so large and tend to congregate near the coasts. Any coastline is vulnerable. A big one like this could happen again next year, or it could happen in a thousand years. But it will happen again.