Compare The Difference In Preparedness Between Chile And Haiti
Posted: Sunday, February 28, 2010
by Joel Hendon
http://hebronics.org/index.html
Don't take me wrong. Chile is a prosperous and modern nation whereas Haiti is poor and lacking in different types of technology. Literally, they are unable to be strongly prepared for such as their recent catastrophe.
Chile's land area is some 302,778 square miles and their population is somewhere near 17 million. Tiny Haiti in comparison, land area equals about 10,714 square miles and their population, before the recent earthquake was about 9.8 million. Also, they are rated as the poorest nation in the Americas.
The earthquake which occurred on January 12, 2010 was very strong at 7.0 magnitude with the epicenter just 16 miles west of the capital city. The statistics of damage are staggering. Approximately 220,000 dead, 300,000 estimated injured, and 1,000,000 homeless. Not only are these casualties enormous but the rest of the island has been adversely affected, due to disrupted commerce, many of the uninjured needed to help with the recovery activities and also an island-wide shortage of food and drinkable water until relief efforts came to the rescue. There had been no sizable earthquake at Haiti for over 150 years, so one can understand why the island would become somewhat complacent, especially when the populace, and government were too poor to make adequate provisions for such a catastrophe.
Actually Chile was just about opposite to the Haiti situation for several reasons. Chile had an enormous earthquake on May 22, 1960, which read 9.5 on the moment magnitude scale. Believe me, that is a killer quake reading. It resulted in tsunami damage throughout the Pacific. Parts of Chile itself, Alaska, Hawaii, Japan, Philippines, New Zealand, Australia plus many of the islands. Some of the Chilean coast experienced waves 85 feet high and Hawaii, some 6,000 miles from the epicenter had 35 foot waves.
When you have a country experience such an awesome event, you can almost always be assured that preparations will be made in anticipation of another some day. Various estimates of the deaths from this monster quake ranged from 2231, 3000, 5700 and 6000. Cost estimates ranged just as widely with estimates from $400 million to $800 million in U.S dollars (in 1960 which would be 2.9 to 5.8 billion in 2010 dollars).
But Chile has since made many drastic improvements in their readiness. They report that approximately 1.5 million homes have been damaged with about a half million demolished. But urban areas show only small amounts of damage since their building are constructed to withstand strong earthquakes and also thousands of low rent apartment buildings have been erected which are earthquake resistant. Their latest count of deaths was slightly over 700, as of today, February 28, 2010. Officials report that there is heavy damage to various infrastructure but they have not yet asked for outside aid. Their country has a strong emergency response organization, well trained and ready. They have called out the army to deal with looters. Their experience with the 1960 quake which is said to be the strongest ever recorded, has given them incentive to be prepared. They are to be commended for this. It makes one wonder if the U.S. own California is as well prepared for the long expected "big one". Let us all pray that it is.
Haiti needs help. It was the first Latin American nation to gain independence, in 1804. It may have been better off to have remained under French control. They, like many other Caribbeans, could be prosperous from tourism, yet it is too poor to offer attraction to that trade. Maybe some wealthy entrepreneur will decide to make a gigantic amusement park there.
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Top-level comments on this article: (2 total)Interesting article, and encouraging to know that they are better able to help themselves than Haiti was. The US can't afford to be the Emergency ATM for the western hemisphere anymore.You have that right, thanks for commenting.
thank you for your article I enjoyed reading it.Thanks for the comment, Terence
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