Did you also note that this was Dec. 2004? At any rate, was interesting reading. It noted similar activity in the Cascadia Subduction Zone and in Japan. Well, we all know what happened in Japan. There they did not have a sea slide, but a major movement of a fault line. According to a graphic shown the other night, the lead edge of the upper fault edge flipped upward along a 300 mile course. This would have made a huge surge in the ocean above it, hence the monstrous tsunami.
I think that even back then we had enough aerial observation possibilities, that a significant boloid oceanic crash would have been noted. Perhaps someone else has more information on those technicalities. I have noted a tendency for severe earthquakes after a period of drought. The first time I became aware of this was in the major 1972 Nicaraguan quake. It followed an extensive period of drought. Since I had traveled there a few years before and also had access to photos of terrible destruction, I was very interested in following this story. It occurred to me that the prolonged drought could have shrunken the earth along the fault line from lack of lubricating water, so that whatever material was preventing slippage along the fault at last failed. It would be interesting to determine how frequent other major earthquakes are relative to prolonged droughts. The link below is an extensive scientific article on the human impact of this disaster and lessons for other quake prone areas like California. Unfortunately, it does not cover how the Somoza family monopoly on concrete increased the suffering but eventually lead to the overthrow of their corrupt government.
http://www.rwkates.org/pdfs/a1973.02.pdf
In researching several stories on major earthquakes and volcanoes I came across what I perceived to be a pattern. That there were periods of about 30 years of increased activity, and then longer periods of decreased activity. During 1783 Iceland’s Laki Fissure erupted over 8 months causing widespread problems http://www.wired.com/2013/06/local-and-global-impacts-1793-laki-eruption-iceland/
Another major activity period was the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-12, which also included a 20,000 death causing earthquake in Caracas, Venezuela. The last major event of that period I consider to be the 1815 eruption of Tambora, which also had worldwide effects including the year with no summer highlighted by frost every month in New England.
The next major period I believe started in 1884 with Krakatao volcano, included earthquakes in Charleston (1886) and San Francisco (1906). There were major volcanoes around the Caribbean Plate—1902, Pelee in Martinique and LaSoufriere in St. Vincent, Santa Maria and others in Central America. I feel the culmination was the eruption of Katmai (Novarupta) in Alaska 1912 which left a 6 mile diameter crater.
In 1982 the next major period began with the Mt St. Helens eruption and others in Mexico and further south, continued with Pinatubo in 1991, included the terrible Indonesian earthquake and tsunami, and perhaps has concluded with the great Japanese earthquake and tsunami of 2014. Then again, there may be one more big surprise. I am not holding my breath because we don’t know when/if.
Feel free to dispute my hypothesis, or throw in other disasters in those time periods for parts of the earth I have not focused on like Europe, Asia and Africa
Looks like I posted it in 2004.