Earthquakes don't kill people — buildings do. The same magnitude quake that a wealthy, well-engineered city shrugs off can take tens of thousands of lives in a poor one of unreinforced masonry. The shaking is released when strained rock slips along a fault; the death toll is set by construction, wealth, and governance. Haiti in 2010 was not hit harder than Japan or Chile have survived; what failed was the built environment. We can map dangerous faults; we still cannot predict when one will break. The 1755 destruction of Lisbon helped birth seismology, while that fundamental limit remains.
The ground is the one thing we trust without thinking. Then, for thirty terrible seconds, it betrays you, and the most solid fact in your world turns to liquid.