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I've lived all my life in earthquake areas. The Big Island has lots of little quakes, which is excellent. Constant readjustment. It's when the earth saves it up until the pressure is enormous that you get the big killer earthquakes. The Big Island shakes it out as she goes along.
If earthquakes scare you, stay away from the Ring Of Fire. Perhaps look in the Caribbean, instead. There, you only have to worry about hurricanes and social unrest.
We have lightening often enough, several months ago I got zapped while standing barefoot in my kitchen on a rain-wet floor. Previous storms have blown out our phones and computer. Earthquakes are common here, you get used to them. Vog is more common on the west (Kona) side of the island.
If earthquakes scare you, stay away from the Ring Of Fire. Perhaps look in the Caribbean, instead. There, you only have to worry about hurricanes and social unrest.
Compared to the mainland lightning is quite infrequent in Hawai'i, but it does occur. In my neighborhood near the volcano it's rare, but when it happens it's usually loud and bright in a couple of big blasts and it's done. Weather experts say it's because we mostly do not have the colliding air masses of different temperatures that generate big lightning storms on the mainland. But we had a massive lightning storm about a year and a half ago in which about 24,000 lightning strikes were recorded in 12 hours. Most people I've talked to couldn't remember another storm like it.
Here's an excellent info page about Hawai'i weather. It's a bit of a long read, but worth it, because it explains a lot of the unusual features of the way our weather works. For instance, the persistent prevailing trade winds that blow east to west 90% of the time in the summer and 50 - 80% of the time in the winter. Houses and apartments that are situated to catch these winds benefit from natural cooling, which is why so many homes don't need air conditioning.
It's also a big part of why the volcanic emissions from the Kilauea volcano are more of a problem, more of the time on the Kona side than on the Hilo side, because the trade winds push the plume west into Ka'u District and then wrap around Mauna Loa to Kona District.
Here is an excellent resource on VOG itself, an interactive map displaying air quality readings at key locations around the island in real time, with links to other information:
I'm looking for a tropical place to live. My thought is that Big Island sounds good except if a Big One hits then I might die.
I'd be more worried about living in Southern illinois. The largest earthquake in US History was in 1812 in New Madrid, Illinois and was so massive that it rang church bells in Boston. According to an article I read in Smithsonian Magazine, there's a calculation that if (when?) another one hits there now more than a million people will likely die, due to inadequate building standards and insufficient disaster preparations. I actually feel safer in Hawai'i.
Check out the City Data profiles for communities you are interested... such as the Hilo profile I linked to below... and under the weather graphs is a section about earthquake activity, both average frequency and a list of the biggest ones on record. In this example, Hilo is listed as having above average earthquake activity for the state, with 764% more likelihood of quakes than the mainland average. But as oregonwoodsmoke mentioned, there are a lot of small frequent quakes. 26 miles south in Volcano the frequency jumps up to something like 1,000% more quakes than average. Why? Because they often center near Volcano but are so small they aren't even felt in Hilo.
But notice that the biggest quake on record for Hilo, in 1975, only caused 2 deaths. Most earthquake deaths occur when buildings collapse on people. Newer Hawaiian buildings are built to handle seismic events and most older ones have been retrofitted, so they rarely collapse on people. There actually seems to be little to worry about. Be prudent about disaster preparations and you should be fine.
I vividly remember the twin waterspouts in May 2011 - not only was there the waterspouts easily seen from Ala Moana Blvd right at the end of work about 5.30pm - the severe flooding was intense and I got trapped from the flash flood for almost 2 hours - stuck under the roof of a apartment building - the sheets of rain from intense and got soaked anyway. Some of the loudest lightening I've ever heard.
And who can foget the lightning storm when Obama was in Hawaii in 2008 and the entire island of Oahu lost power. I was living in Hawaii Kai at the time and it took much longer than the rest of the island to get power. Foodland stayed open - they had calculators for checkout. Lesson learned - have a lot of candles on hand.
And the real big one - The big island 6.6 quake that knocked out power in Oahu for an extended time and destroyed a lot of buildings on the big island. The was the first time I learned Oahu isn't on a true grid system - when it goes out - it goes out for everyone.
I'm looking for a tropical place to live. My thought is that Big Island sounds good except if a Big One hits then I might die.
If you are stuck by lightening, whether in Hawaii or elsewhere, you could die.
If you are caught in a collapsing building in an earthquake, whether in Hawaii or elsewhere, you could die.
But other things are more likely to cause your death in the US:
Interestingly, you are more likely to be legally executed in the US than to die from lightening or an earthquake. Who'd have thought that? Anyway, Hawaii does not have a recent history of people getting killed by earthquakes, lightning, nor vog. No do we have capital punishment (legal executions).
I know OP is thinking about the Caribbean as well...there is a much greater chance of being the victim of an armed robbery/murder in the Caribbean than dying from a hurricane. It's one of the major reasons we got out of there. The night of the morning we flew out to move to HI, the sheriff, a friend, was shot and severely wounded. And they also shot the deputy. When hoodies are going around singing "I shot the sheriff, and I also shot the deputy" and it's for real, you've gotta realize that the Caribbean is not such an ideal tropical paradise.
There was one day several years ago when we had a tsunami alert, a hurricane warning and a small earthquake all in one day. It was a good day to just give it all up and stay in bed.
Big Island doesn't seem to get the same hurricanes the other islands do. The big mass of the mountains sort of repels the winds and seems to whip them around into Oahu or Kauai.
We did have that big earthquake a few years ago. A 6.7 and it caused some damages. Nothing like the same size earthquake has caused in other areas, though, such as Haiti. Then there was that really big earthquake in Japan which didn't really cause all that much damage directly but the tsunami which followed it did cause huge amounts of damage.
Of course, if you're going to be scared of dying, what about the plane crashing while you fly to move here?
We all have to go sometime...the weather events here scare me less than weather events in many other areas.
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