State university receives grant to create database of disaster scenarios

There are few things in life as frightening as being in the midst of a major earthquake. They often begin as a low vibration, a feel and a sound as though a large truck is rumbling by outside a house or office.

Quickly they escalate into a fierce, deadly freight train of a roar with violent shaking of buildings and everything in them. At times within the shaking the earth itself heaves upward and down as though the entire planet was one large rolling wave.

It is at such times that many people realize – perhaps for the first time - they have no real control over their lives; that "control" is simply a temporary illusion created by nature during the times nature chooses not to be on a rampage.