World Shakers

At least 27 people were killed this week, when an earthquake shook Panay and four other Philippine islands, toppled Jaro Cathedral's campanile, cracked open streets, caused $500,000 damage.

History has recorded much greater catastrophes. Etna overflowed and 20,000 Sicilians died. An Indonesian crater blew its top, washed the sea over 36,000 Javanese and Sumatrans. Beneath Tokyo Bay, the earth shifted and two great cities were laid in ruins.

For a youthful cinder of two or three billion years, the earth has a lot of ailments. And man, the principal sufferer, knows precious little about the earthquakes, volcanoes, tidal waves and other ills that plague the planet. Last week, in a new book, Causes of Catastrophe (Whittlesey; $3), Lewis Don Leet, professor of seismology at Harvard, summed up some old and new diagnoses.

Chills & Jitters. Earthquakes are the most persistent of Mother Earth's ailments, and the most mysterious. Mongolian lamas used to assure their followers that the world rests on the back of a monstrous frog whose every muscle twitch causes a temblor. Natives of Mozambique logically decided that their quake of 1891 was just a case of global chills & fever. Scientists now believe that the earth's crust is a mosaic of big, loose blocks that roll and toss every time they are jarred out of line. San Francisco is close to a "fault" between two such blocks. But most earthquakes are relatively harmless: the earth has at least 50,000 a year, which keep seismographs constantly jittery.

Incantations & TNT. Volcanoes, on the other hand, are less mysterious and more dangerous. Though they are worshiped as goddesses and damned as hellholes, bubbling craters are really just safety valves, through which molten rock (magma) under the earth's skin can blow off steam from time to time. Volcanoes can be depended on to act up every so often; since 79 A.D., when Pompeii and Herculaneum were first buried, old Vesuvius has popped off about once every generation.

In 1881, when the city of Hilo, Hawaii was threatened by Mauna Loa, a local princess was called to the rescue. Mumbling an incantation, she threw a hunk of her hair into the onrushing lava and stopped it right on the outskirts of town. In 1935 the U.S. Army substituted TNT bombs for hair, and tried the same stunt --with about the same result.

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