Haiti: Disasters and extreme poverty

[Perun]

I am ignorant of Haiti's history of earthquakes, but given that a 7.0 one devastated the entire nation, specially Port-au-Prince goes to show it doesn't happen too often.

I do seem to remember that Haiti has been hit by a number of major disasters in recent history. I'm pretty sure that a major hurricane was one of them, but I don't know any details.

The thing is, Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world, so whenever a disaster devastates the country, they can't just rebuild it disaster-proof like a country such as the US or Japan can. Hence, next time a disaster hits, it devastates the entire country again. And there is nothing they can do about that because nobody else cares enough to help.

 

[Forostar]

A lot of help is there at the moment (and still coming) but it's freakin' hard to reach the people who need it most.

 

[LooseCannon]

The destroyed infrastructure makes it difficult for aid to reach the people who need it most. You can't fly in airplanes to a destroyed airport nor bring up cargo ships to a destroyed dockyard.

 

[Forostar]

Indeed. And once all this help has arrived at (e.g.) the airport, try bring it soon over those crappy roads.

I am curious how things will go tomorrow, when the 10,000 US troops arrive.

 

[Perun]

Some facts:

The United Nations Security council is going to discuss things tomorrow. If you're wondering where they have been so far- their headquarters in Haiti have been destroyed and their chief employees killed. It's that bad.

Residents of Port-au-Prince have been fleeing into other parts of the country which, even before the earthquake, had limited access to food, water and medical care.

Nobody even knows how many people have been living in Port-au-Prince before the quake. The official number was about 1.3 million, but it is more likely that 2 million or even much more had been living inside the city.

The dead are being buried in mass graves as fast as possible so they don't further spread any diseases. The current estimated death toll is 50 000 but is expected to rise higher depending on how quickly medical care can reach those who need it.

 

[____no5]

You're quite right on your logarithms, LC. Take that from a man with an engineering degree

 

The 10-logarithm of 2 is about 0.3, so an increment of 1.3 on the Richter scale means 20 times more energy is being released in the quake.

When an earthquake at 7.0 causes a death toll going into 6 digits, this is a proof of terrible infrastructure and that the place wasn't very well prepared.

The earthquake in Kobe in 1995, for example (source) had a comparable intensity, but only 6,434 died ...

It's very important the depth of the earthquake, in Haiti was very in the surface, thus more terrible.
If it was much deeper, even if it was of 8 Richter, it could have caused less damage -less energy released finally due to depth

 

[Forostar]

Apart from the fact that (because of the poverty) there were no (or hardly any) safety rules for building the houses, lots of houses were built on hills, which has an extra destructive effect in an earthquake of this scale.

 

[LooseCannon]

It's very important the depth of the earthquake, in Haiti was very in the surface, thus more terrible.
If it was much deeper, even if it was of 8 Richter, it could have caused less damage -less energy released finally due to depth

No, no, no. The Richter scale measures the shaking at the surface. The depth of the quake has nothing to do with it.

 

[Cornfed Hick]

The destroyed infrastructure makes it difficult for aid to reach the people who need it most. You can't fly in airplanes to a destroyed airport nor bring up cargo ships to a destroyed dockyard.

This is the "double-whammy" that compounds the tragedy -- not only is the poverty and corruption in Haiti responsible for the inadequate building construction that was a key factor in the widespread destruction by the earthquake, it is also responsible for the inadequate infrastructure that is preventing the developed world from effectively easing the Haitians' suffering.  A couple of days ago, we were watching a TV reporter (Diane Sawyer) who was in Haiti and reporting that U.S. aid planes were unable to land at the airport and had to be re-routed, because the airport couldn't handle the air traffic.  As my wife pointed out:  "Yeah, but the plane carrying Diane Sawyer obviously got through.  Way to prioritize." 

 

[LooseCannon]

The USS Carl Vinson is currently acting as an airport off sea, with small cargo planes landing on her deck and transferring relief supplies to heavy lift helicopters. That's a good use of a nuclear carrier!

 

[roxyrohit]

People on television are emphasizing how “poor” Haitians are. Yes, yes, yes. Extreme poverty, dollar a day, Sally Struthers, we get that. But as we saw with Katrina, in these cases poverty is only a contributing factor. Total failure of government, that is also essential to turn a natural disaster into an epidemic of death. Twitterers are saying that every single hospital in Port-au-Prince is destroyed or abandoned. Every. Single. One. That’s not “natural.” That can only happen when you don’t zone for enough hospitals outside of danger areas. It happens when your infrastructure doesn’t have enough fallback options for people to be able to navigate to work in the middle of chaos. It happens when there are not enough trained medical professionals for your dense urban population in the first place.

 

[LooseCannon]

Which is, of course, the observation many have made. Port-au-Prince was destroyed because a) the area hasn't seen a quake in 250 years of this magnitude, and b) it's really fucking poor. So poor that it never had enough hospitals.

 

[Onhell]

That can only happen when you don’t zone for enough hospitals outside of danger areas.

In a nation the size of a nickle that kind of zoning is nearly impossible to find. Specially when the entire nation, not just Port-au-Prince was devastated.

 

[Genghis Khan]

Which is, of course, the observation many have made. Port-au-Prince was destroyed because a) the area hasn't seen a quake in 250 years of this magnitude, and b) it's really fucking poor. So poor that it never had enough hospitals.

Certain rich nations do not have enough hospitals either.  (I couldn't resist).  Does anyone know much about the influence the CIA and the corrupt Haitian governments have had on the island nation's poverty?  I've heard and read blurbs about it, but to be honest, have not put much effort into learning more.