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"It's easy for people to become complacent, to forget [the threat of earthquakes]," says Beattie. Especially in a natural setting like Christchurch.

Much of the outlying region of Canterbury Province is pancake-flat, leading many throughout the years to suppose that the threat of a devastating earthquake in the immediate area had receded over the millenniums.

Any cataclysmic earthquake in Canterbury, it used to be said, would radiate out from the Great Alpine Fault in the South Island. Yet the 7.0-magnitude quake on Sept. 4 was far removed from that main zone, and Tuesday's quake farther still.

New Zealand hasn't lacked for initiatives aimed at keeping the geological realities of a shaky country in the public mind. Schoolchildren here are routinely drilled in the art of diving under a desk or hunkering underneath an available doorway. Such activities have gathered pace in the last decade.

As this small island nation picks up the pieces from the 6.3-magnitude earthquake that walloped its second-largest city, Christchurch, leaving scores dead and hundreds of people still trapped, officials are set once again to assess whether routinely dire warnings have yet led to the hoped-for sea change in the nation's preparedness.

Rescuers work to put out a fire at a collapsed building in Christchurch, New Zealand, Tuesday. A powerful earthquake collapsed buildings at the height of a busy workday killing and trapping dozens of people in one of the country's worst natural disasters.