Which is followed by verses 15 and 16, which are in standard SDA apocalyptology identified with the Mayflower reaching America in 1620 with its cargo of English persecuted christians..

13 When the dragon saw that he had been hurled to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. 14 The woman was given the two wings of a great eagle, so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the wilderness, where she would be taken care of for a time, times and half a time, out of the serpent’s reach. 15 Then from his mouth the serpent spewed water like a river, to overtake the woman and sweep her away with the torrent. 16 But the earth helped the woman by opening its mouth and swallowing the river that the dragon had spewed out of his mouth.

Sure, but this doesn't mean that vv. 15, 16 occur after v. 14. Verses 15, 16 are exapanding on something that would occur during the wilderness phase of the Church. Since the water is "peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues" (Rev 17:15), the earth is a sparsely-inhabited place (a wilderness).

So the woman in the wilderness was already hiding in America when the Dragon sent waters to drown her?

No, when the dragon sent waters to drown her (the church was being persecuted in densely populated regions), the earth (an sparsely populated region) helped her.

The woman fled into the wilderness, sparsely populated region.
The dragon spewed water after the woman, trying to make population centres of the area of wilderness where the woman hid?
The earth opened up and swallowed the water, no matter how many people the dragon sent after the woman, the wilderness remained sparsely populated.

In which case the wilderness cannot be the US east coast which hasn't been sparsely populated for the last 150 years by anyone's standard..

The church-in-the-wilderness period is the period in which, owing to persecution, the church had to flee from densely populated areas to small villages, to the mountains, etc. The water spewed after the woman seems to be the many persecuting groups sent to exterminate even the small villages. It was then that many Christians found refuge in a recently-discovered and sparsely-populated area.
Of course this region wouldn't remain for ever sparsely populated. Besides, we believe the 1260 years of the church in the wilderness ended in 1798.

But it is the persecuting waters that end up in the earth, not the persecuted woman.

The scenario my imagination generates is that, after the woman has passed, the earth opens up and swallows up the flood which comes after her.
Anyway, all this language is figurative. The woman being "carried away by the flood" is a symbol of destruction. The fact that the earth swallowed up the flood would mean that it made ineffectual the devices of destruction. The intentions of the dragon were frustrated.

Not too much further down the road the opposite will be true when the Lamblike Beast will speak like a dragon and become the persecutor.

Is the number of earthquakes in the world increasing or not?
We are now in 2020.

Reported:
"Since the coronavirus began to spread at the end of last year, (2019) a wave of earthquakes is ranging around the world, overlooked as the fear of infection leads people to ignore the shaking under their feet."

RUSSIA
1) A 7.5 magnitude earthquake hit off the coast of Russia near the Kuril islands that lay off the coast of Japan on Tuesday March 24, setting off a tsunami warning, but these waves weren't high enough to cause much damage.

UTAH
2) A 5.7 earthquake in Utah, March 18, Salt Lake City suffered mainly from falling bricks and cracked mortar, no severe damage. Though falling bricks can be dangerous and requires renovation. Electrical power was cut to tens of thousands even suspending work at Utah's public health lab

CROATIA
3) A 5.4-magnitude earthquake hit Croatia?s capital city, Zagreb, on Sunday March 22, shortly after 6 a.m. local time. The quake injured at least 26 people and caused at least one death. It caused considerable damage to buildings pushing people out into the streets at exactly the time they were supposed to stay indoors to fight the spread of the coronavirus. Even forcing a hospital to evacuate.
Pictures of hospital beds with patients lined up outside that were taken in Croatia, have been posted by some people as covid patients in Italy!


NEW ZEALAND
4) A 4.4 magnitude earthquake has hit central New Zealand just a few hours ago (March 25) , just after a State of Emergency alert for lock down due to Covid-19 was transmitted across the country. Feeling the earth shake is rather unnerving after such news, but the quake was not overly damaging.

CALIFORNIA
5)A 5.8 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of northern California, March 9,

SMALLER QUAKES
6) North America is being shaken by smaller quakes
A whole series of earthquakes just above 4 magnitude have been shaking the west coast. Not powerful or close enough to populated cities to do serious damage -- however they are achieving a higher magnitude than the usual tremors.

A series of seven small tremors shook Oklahoma over the course of 24-hours this last week.

Montreal suffered a 3.3 shaking Friday morning. The seventh in Quebec since the beginning of the year but the first near a city.

INDONESIA
7) A powerful 6.4-magnitude earthquake has struck south of Bali, Indonesia. They were fortunate this time as there wasn't much damage, but Indonesia suffers frequent seismic and volcanic activity due to its position on the Pacific 'Ring of Fire', where tectonic plates collide. In 2018, a 7.5-magnitude quake and a subsequent tsunami in Palu on Sulawesi island left more than 4,300 people dead or missing.
A 9.1 magnitude earthquake on December 26 in 2004 struck Aceh province, causing a tsunami that claimed the lives of more than 170,000 people in Indonesia alone.

8) IRAN
November 2019 a shallow, 5.9-magnitude earthquake struck north-western Iran early on Friday, killing five people and injuring 120.
December 2019 a 5.1 magnitude earthquake hit Iran at 5 AM local time
Two weeks later two more quakes hit Iran, the first quake, measuring 4.9 magnitude, struck just before 9.00 a.m. local time in Bushehr province. Around 30 minutes later a second quake, this time measuring 4.5 magnitude, struck the same province.
The quake epicenters were within 20 kilometers of the city of Borazjan -- a short distance from the country's Bushehr nuclear power plant.

The country of Iran has suffered a number of major disasters in recent decades, including at the ancient city of Bam, which was decimated by a catastrophic earthquake in 2003 that killed at least 31,000 people.

In 1990, a 7.4-magnitude quake in northern Iran killed 40,000 people, injured 300,000 and left half a million homeless, reducing dozens of towns and nearly 2,000 villages to rubble.

Iran has experienced at least two other significant quakes in recent years ? one in 2005 that killed more than 600 people and another in 2012 that left some 300 dead.

TURKEY
9) March 19 An earthquake with a magnitude of 5.0 struck eastern Elazig province of Turkey on Thursday.
A magnitude-6.8 quake had jolted Elazig province Jan. 24, killing 41 people and injuring 1,500.
More than 1,350 prefabricated houses have been built in a "container city" for quake victims in Elazig province.
Istanbul, which was shaken by a 5.8 magnitude earthquake last September has its citizens frightened. Back in 1999 an earthquake killed more than 17,000 people in the greater region.

This is just a sample!

The whole earth is groaning.