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Why were the Chile and Haiti earthquakes so different?

By Sarah Oughton
March 3, 2010 at 1:00 pm

Working for an emergency organisation you are of course always aware that sooner or later another disaster is going to happen. But when I heard last weekend about the earthquake in Chile – a country prone to quakes – my initial reaction was disbelief that it was happening again so quickly after Haiti.

The earthquake which struck Chile measured 8.8 on the Richter scale – I knew that that was huge and I held my breath waiting for the news of the devastation to unfold. Later I found out that it is actually one of the ten largest earthquakes ever recorded and it’s the worst disaster in Chile for 50 years.

The British Red Cross immediately released £50,000 from its Disaster Fund to help people in Chile and on Sunday we launched the Chile Earthquake Appeal.

In Haiti, the quake measured 7.3 on the Richter scale and more than 230,000 people are reported to have died. So far, reports on Chile say around 700 people have died.

The scale of both of these disasters is horrifying and for those involved of course numbers and stats mean nothing – it’s about the fact that they’ve lost loved ones, or homes, or jobs, or possibly all these things. And we desperately need your donations to help people recover both in Chile and Haiti.

However, the emergency response to these disasters will be different from each other. Strangely, although the earthquake in Chile is reported to have been about 100 times stronger than the one in Haiti (I don’t quite understand the maths/science behind all this but if you want to know then check out an explanation of the Richter scale on Wikipedia), it looks like it has had a less devastating impact in terms of lives lost and damage to infrastructure.

This is partly because the earthquake in Haiti happened almost directly under its capital Port-au-Prince, where almost three million people live, whereas in Chile, it’s second largest city Concepcion, which has a population of around 650,000, was around 90 km from the epicentre of the quake and it’s capital Santiago, around 350 km away.

Another major factor is that Chile is much wealthier than Haiti, it is far better prepared for disasters and has more earthquake resistant buildings. Haiti, however, has a long history of political turmoil, it is the poorest country in the Americas and its economy and infrastructure was already weak – when the quake struck it was inevitable that its buildings would collapse like a stack of pancakes.

So despite the quake in Haiti being of lesser magnitude, its impact has been far more catastrophic and has resulted in the biggest emergency response operation by the Red Cross in its 150 year history.

It’s not to say there aren’t major needs in Chile right now, however, the Chilean government was not badly affected by the quake and is providing strong leadership in co-ordinating the response.

The Chilean Red Cross is a member of the National Commission for Civil Protection in Chile, the body set up to co-ordinate disaster relief responses between government and other agencies.

It has staff and volunteers who have a lot of experience in responding to disasters and they have been on the ground helping survivors since the quake struck.

Today, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies launched an appeal to raise around £4.3 million, which will be used to support the Chilean Red Cross in helping 75,000 people recover from the quake.

Because the Chilean Red Cross is coping well, it’s unlikely that the British Red Cross will be deploying any delegates. However, we still really need to raise as much money as possible to support their work in delivering aid and supporting thousands of families who have been devastated by this disaster.

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Tags: Chile, disaster, earthquake, emergency aid, Haiti, Richter scale

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 at 1:00 pm and is filed under Emergencies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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