In Haiti, wrecking crews tore down the Presidential Palace last week. The ornate building was a reminder of the devastating earthquake that struck the nation, located on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, almost three years ago.

At magnitude 7.0, the quake killed 300,000 people and took the homes of another million and a half. On March 11, 2011, an earthquake of mind-boggling magnitude 9 hit the Sendai region on the east coast of Japan. It triggered a giant set of ocean waves, also known as tsunami, the took a yet undetermined number of lives and devastated entire cities.

Last week, the Indonesian coast was rocked by another strong 6.1 quake. Fortunately, the Sept. 8 event didn’t result in fatalities.

It seems like we’re having more and more earthquakes in various parts of the world, and these catastrophes follow each other more closely. But it isn’t so.

One factor in the flood of disaster news is the Internet, delivering information more quickly than ever before. The other is population growth and especially its concentration.

In 1975, Haiti’s population was roughly 5 million. In 2010, 10 million. The growth rate of Indonesia has been a modest 1 percent annually, but mega-city Jakarta alone has 10 million people in harm’s way. And 700 miles from Jakarta, Malaysia’s ultra-modern trade center Kuala Lumpur contains another 1.6 million people.

Earthquakes don’t strike random areas of the world. They are concentrated where the planet’s building blocks, the tectonic plates, touch each other. For the U.S., this means that we’ll see more strong quakes on the west coast. Moderate ones are common in the Los Angeles area.

But there are big ones less often farther north. The 1989 Loma Prieta quake that struck Santa Cruz, San Francisco and San Josewas a messenger of what’s in store for that highly populated region.

Our own state, Georgia, is close to the center of a tectonic plate. The world’s predetermined victims of future catastrophes are at plate boundaries: Indonesia, Japan, the Caribbean, and the North and South American west coast.

Most earthquake zones are aligned with sea coasts, but so are the most densely populated areas of the world. It’s a worrisome mix.

Rudi Kiefer, Ph.D., is a Professor of Physical Science and Director of Sustainability at Brenau University. His column appears Sundays and at gainesvilletimes.com/life.