In just eight days, two powerful earthquakes killed approximately 360 people across Colombia and Indonesia — a toll that continues to rise. Thousands more were injured or driven from damaged homes. In Colombia, rescuers searched collapsed buildings while hospitals and schools counted their losses. In Indonesia, landslides blocked roads, aftershocks kept families outdoors and isolated communities waited for food, water and medical care.

Americans should not watch these tragedies as though they occurred in another world. The same forces are gathering beneath our own feet. The question is not whether another destructive earthquake will strike the United States. It is whether we will be ready when it does.

Science has already delivered the warning. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that nearly 75 percent of the country could experience potentially damaging earthquake shaking within the next century. Thirty-seven states have recorded earthquakes greater than magnitude 5 during the past 200 years.

Unfortunately, the risk is not confined to California. The New Madrid Seismic Zone stretches through the central United States, where the great earthquakes of 1811 and 1812 damaged buildings hundreds of miles away and reportedly caused the Mississippi River to flow backward. Alaska,........

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