Practical Hazard Planning – Facts, not Emotion

It’s been a while since I last posted anything here before today. It’s been, as you can imagine, a very busy 2010 as far as hazards are concerned. Scientists have been busy; insurance people have been busy; relief and aid workers have been busy; politicians have been busy.

There has been a lot to do in terms of the here and now, but there’s also a lot to learn from what’s happening. In my previous post, I looked at the global distribution of quakes over the last 7 days through the cold lens of science. But when you look at individual events, there is much to learn. And learning is as much learning from mistakes as learning what worked well.

Here’s a nice article on a comparison of the Chile quake and the Haiti event. Let’s put aside any notion that Haiti is cursed, or that Haiti’s poverty and corruption led to an amplification of the disaster to epic proportions. Let’s just deal with some simple facts and observations.

Chile is in a far more active seismic zone than Haiti, and has experienced several large earthquakes within people’s lifetimes (Chile had a M9.5 in 1960!); Haiti’s last major quake was centuries ago. As a result, culturally, people in Chile are more aware of earthquakes, and this is extremely important in reinforcing earthquake drills etc in the general population, not to mention people’s approach to building and construction, from the owner/developer to the architect/engineer to the approval agencies to the eventual occupant. We need to expect a minimum standard of building that we’d be prepared to live in, work in, shop in, eat in, or generally step into, as opposed to a standing deathtrap.

Let’s go back to some facts again. On average, there is about 1 earthquake per year somewhere in the world at the same magnitude as Chile’s February 27 temblor; there are about 18 quakes per year somewhere in the planet the same magnitude as Haiti. Haiti’s quake was about the equivalent of about 31.6 megatons of TNT; Chile’s was equivalent to 15.8 GIGAtons.

Reality is a sledgehammer. It’s all good and well to “prepare of earthquakes”, but we need to know what exactly are we preparing for, and how we go about preparing for that, as opposed to general and vague statements. Haiti’s gotten its sledgehammer, and now needs to get back on its feet, its population, resilient as ever, now prepared to move forward with their lives. However, they need to take ownership of their country to bring about the changes necessary to ensure this doesn’t happen again, where “this” doesn’t mean another earthquake – that’s inevitable – but the epic scale of the disaster that followed the shake. And the international community needs to step up after the relief operations finally wind down and stop pitying Haiti with aid assistance, and start pumping in foreign direct investments into the country. Start respecting the people and nation of Haiti more than simple condescending aid designed more to ease their consciences than to help Haiti in earnest.