Re: [xmca] The Human Spark: And Human Disaster (Earthquake in Haiti)

[Steve Gabosch <stevegabosch@me.com>]

Below is an article from Associated Press which begins to reveal the  
extent that the current disaster in Haiti is predominately a  
**social** disaster.  It is possible, according to the article, that  
**500,000** Haitians will die, more than from any so-called "natural"  
disaster in human history.  This article points to some of the  
**social** causes of this unimaginable catastrophe.

- Steve


On Jan 13, 2010, at 7:12 PM, mike cole wrote:
> Pray for the people of Haiti and if you can, send $$. They are in such
> horrible shape that only that most abstract of "goods" is apt to do  
> any good
> in the short run.
> :-(
> mike


Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Why Haiti is always in a state of despair
By Seth Borenstein

The Associated Press


When it comes to natural disasters, Haiti seems to have a bull's-eye  
on it. That's because of a killer combination of geography, poverty,  
social problems, slipshod building standards and bad luck, experts say.

The list of catastrophes is mind-numbing: This week's devastating  
earthquake. Four tropical storms or hurricanes that killed about 800  
people in 2008. Killer storms in 2005 and 2004. Floods in 2007, 2006,  
2003 (twice) and 2002. And that's only the 21st century rundown.

"If you want to put the worst-case scenario together in the Western  
Hemisphere [for disasters], it's Haiti," said Richard Olson, a Florida  
International University professor who directs the Disaster Risk  
Reduction in the Americas project.

"There's a whole bunch of things working against Haiti," he said. "One  
is the hurricane track. The second is tectonics. Then you have the  
environmental degradation and the poverty."

This is the 15th disaster since 2001 in which the U.S. Agency for  
International Development has sent money and help to Haiti. Some 3,000  
people have been killed and millions of people displaced in disasters  
that preceded this week's earthquake. The U.S. has sent more than $16  
million in disaster aid to Haiti since the turn of the century.



Reeling from hurricanes

While causes of individual disasters are natural, heart-tugging social  
ills make Haiti a constant site of catastrophe, disaster experts say.  
It starts with poverty, includes deforestation, unstable governments,  
poor building standards, low literacy rates and then comes back to  
poverty.

The quake this week comes as Haiti is trying to recover from 2008,  
when it was hit four times by tropical storms and hurricanes, said  
Kathleen Tierney, director of the University of Colorado's Natural  
Hazard Center.

And while bad luck is involved, former top Federal Emergency  
Management Agency official Mark Merritt, president of the disaster  
consulting firm James Lee Witt Associates, said, "It's an economic  
issue. It's one of those things that feeds on each other."

Every factor that disaster experts look for in terms of vulnerability  
is the worst it can be for Haiti, said Dennis Mileti, a seismic safety  
commissioner for the state of California and author of the book  
"Disasters by Design."

Add high population density in the capital, many of them rural  
migrants who now live in shantytowns throughout Port-au-Prince.

"It doesn't get any worse," said Mileti, a retired University of  
Colorado professor. "I fear this may go down in history as the largest  
disaster ever, or pretty close to it."

While nobody knows the death toll, a leading senator, Youri Latortue,  
said as many as 500,000 could be dead. The deadliest quakes on record:  
the 2004 Asian tsunami that killed more than 227,000 and a 1976  
earthquake in China that killed 255,000, according to the U.S.  
Geological Survey.

"Whether it comes in as No. 1, No. 2 or No. 3, only time will tell,"  
Mileti said. "This is a major cataclysm."



Lack of care a concern

Vulnerability to natural disasters is almost a direct function of  
poverty, said Debarati Guha Sapir, director of the World Health  
Organization's Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters.

"Impacts are not natural, nor is there a divine hand or ill fate,"  
Sapir said. "People will also die now of lack of follow-up medical  
care. In other words, those who survived the quake may not survive for  
long due to the lack of adequate medical care."

University of South Carolina's Susan Cutter, who maps out social  
vulnerability to disaster by county in the United States, said Haiti's  
poverty makes smaller disasters worse.

"It's because they're so vulnerable, any event tips the balance," said  
Cutter, director of the school's Hazards and Vulnerability Research  
Institute. "They don't have the kind of resiliency that other nations  
have. It doesn't take much to tip the balance."

One problem is the poor quality of buildings, Merritt said. Haiti  
doesn't have building codes. Even if it did, people who make on  
average $2 a day can't afford to build something that can withstand  
earthquakes and hurricanes, he said. Poverty often is a major reason  
for poor infrastructure, Tierney said.

Then there's deforestation, which causes erosion and worsens flooding.  
Haiti leads the Western Hemisphere in tree-clearing, mostly for  
cooking because of the poverty, Merritt said.

Another problem is the inability to prepare for and cope with  
disaster, said Merritt, who last fall started work to help train  
Haitians to prepare for disasters, including creating emergency- 
response teams in a country that only has a couple of fire stations.  
It involved Haiti's small-disaster bureau, the United Nations, Red  
Cross and other relief agencies and governments. Training manuals  
still were being translated from English to Creole when the quake hit,  
he said.

"If you look at neighboring Cuba, they have a very good emergency  
management infrastructure," Tierney said. "That's partly because of  
the way they organize the country from the block upward."

Another issue: Haiti has focused on hurricanes because quakes have  
been rare.

Until about a decade ago, scientists believed the north coast of  
Hispaniola, shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic, was more prone  
to earthquakes. But work by Tim Dixon of the University of Miami found  
the southern fault zone, where Tuesday's quake occurred, was equally  
likely to produce temblors.

Scientists have known about the seismic threat for a while, but Dixon  
said that doesn't help the Haitian government, which lacks the  
resources to quake-proof buildings and structures.

"This was not that huge of an earthquake, but there's been a lot of  
damage," he said. "It's the tragedy of a natural disaster superimposed  
on a poor country."



Stark differences

The Dominican Republic, relatively richer and more stable than Haiti,  
provides a good contrast when it comes to catastrophes, experts said.

Buildings in the Dominican Republic are stronger and withstand  
disaster better, Merritt said.

The damage to Haiti is so devastating, so extensive that it offers a  
sense of hope in rebuilding, the experts said. Past disasters,  
including Hurricane Katrina, show it is easier to put up new buildings  
than rebuild damaged ones, one reason why the wiped-clear Mississippi  
coast came back faster than New Orleans, Merritt said.

After the killer 1976 earthquake in Guatemala, houses were rebuilt  
with less vulnerable, lighter roofs and the entire region was designed  
to be less disaster prone, Florida International's Olson said.

"Catastrophic disasters open a window of opportunity to fundamentally  
change how cities are rebuilt," Olson said. "If it's rebuilt in the  
same fashion [as it is now], our children are going to have this same  
conversation."



Copyright © The Seattle Times Company_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca