Exactly 2 years to the date after the great Sumatra earthquake, the island of Taiwan was shaken by an uncommon magnitude 7.1 earthquake and a series of aftershocks centered just off her southwestern coast on the continental shelf. The event is the largest in a century in that particular area, tectonically controlled by the subduction of the Eurasia plate under the Philippine plate, a rare and peculiar case of a lighter continental plate subducting under a heavier oceanic plate.