Yesterday morning, I awoke to an email marked urgent, it was about the massive 8.8 earthquake that hit central Chile. My colleague and her family had recently visited Chile and on Friday as we left for the day, I told her to bring in pictures from her family vacation. That conversation seems light years away now.
The Chile earthquake was 500 times stronger than the 7.0 earthquake that hit Haiti 6 weeks ago and as news accounts came in, it became clear that Chile's causalities would not be anywhere near than of Haiti's. The dead toll stands at 700, compared to Haiti's 220,000. The stark differences can only be blamed on poverty. Poverty preys on the weak, vulnerable, sick and in a twisted way exacerbates tragedy. Below I have listed the 4 main differences between the two.
1. In Haiti there is no money for seismic risk evaluations, frankly earthquakes were not on any one's radar, this is an island that is used to hurricanes and floods. The last quake was 200 years ago, so there is no institutional memory of it.
2. Building and zoning codes are lax; there is no money to inspect construction projects, force people to use better material or pay government workers to enforce the law.
3. Location. It is also important to note the epicenter of the quakes. In Haiti it was right outside the capital, in Chile it was 200 miles NE of the capitol Santiago and 70 miles from the second largest city Concepcion. The greater population density contributed to Haiti's enormous lose.
4. Chile's quake was deeper in the ground 21.7 miles as opposed to Haiti's which was 8.1 miles.
All of this contributed to the staggering lose of life in Haiti.
Even though Pat Robertson blames the audacity of defiant slaves in search of freedom for Haiti's recent tragedy, I squarely point the finger at poverty. The people didn't die from the earthquake, they died from poverty.
No comments:
Post a Comment