Seismic Inequality (Foreign Policy)
Charles Kenny's weekly Foreign Policy column on earthquakes and inequality.
From the Article
The death and destruction in Japan may be horrifying, but the record earthquake that struck March 11 off the east coast of Honshu island still suggests one important lesson: Building codes and land use regulations can save lives. Japan's strict guidelines have been widely credited for keeping the death toll down to a fraction of the casualties in Haiti's quake last year. But that doesn't mean we should import them lock, stock, and barrel to the developing world, where the great majority of earthquake-related mortality occurs. The regulations are also complex and expensive. And there are much cheaper and more straightforward ways to save lives.
It is too early to know the full extent of the tragedy still unfolding in Japan. But one thing we do know is that the great majority of deaths -- and most of the problems at the nuclear plants -- are the result not of the quake itself, but of the resulting tsunami. Things could have been much worse. Although the YouTube images of shaken workers and crashing shelves in Tokyo were frightening, there were very few injuries or deaths reported in the capital city -- or anywhere else where flood waters didn't come rushing ashore. This despite the earthquake being the largest recorded in Japan's history -- and orders of magnitude larger than the devastating Haiti quake.
That means the usual pattern has been repeated: Earthquakes don't kill people in rich countries; they kill people in poor countries. The 1988 earthquake in Armenia was half as strong as the 1989 quake in Loma Prieta near San Francisco, and yet caused 25,000 deaths compared with 100 in San Francisco. The 2003 Paso Robles quake in California had the same power as the Bam quake in Iran in 2003; the death toll was two in California and 41,000 in Iran. Again, Chile's recent earthquake was more powerful than Haiti's, but the death toll was considerably lower. Chile is a member of the OECD club of rich countries; Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.
