THE Pacific “ring of fire” roared again on September 16th. A giant earthquake, whose magnitude of 8.3 ranks it among the 30 most energetic tremors of the past century, rocked the seafloor just off the coast of central Chile, sending waves as high as 4.5 metres (15 feet) onto shore and shaking the ground as far as eastern Brazil. Five people have been reported dead so far, and around 1m have been evacuated. The overall death toll is likely to be modest, since Chile—a relatively developed nation in one of the world’s most seismically active regions—has designed much of its infrastructure to withstand such shocks. Nonetheless, natural disasters can still inflict devastating costs on the country: an 8.8-magnitude quake that struck in 2010 wrought $31 billion in economic damage. As long as the Nazca Plate continues its steady march towards the South American Plate at some 79mm (three inches) per year, earthquakes should continue to rattle the region with some frequency.