Death tolls are rising after two earthquakes hit Indonesia in two days. The first quake hit Wednesday evening just off the Indonesian city of Padang with a 7.6 magnitude, the New York Times reports, and has killed at least 529 people, although that number is likely to rise as rescuers dig for survivors. As the airport reopened on Thursday, a 6.6 quake hit the region, causing further chaos and property damage, although the quake hit too far inland to generate a tsunami. On Tuesday, an 8.0 earthquake elsewhere in the Pacific Basin, a volatile area rife with volcanic arcs, caused a tsunami that slammed massive waves into the islands of Samoa, American Samoa, and Tonga, killing at least 154 people. The Samoan and Indonesian quakes were not directly connected, although they occurred 6,000 miles apart, and spurred memories of the December 26, 2004 tsunami that killed nearly a quarter million people in South Asia.
