Posted on 02/14/2010 6:17:37 PM PST by EnjoyingLife
The devastating earthquakes that hit China on 12 May 2008, Italy on 6 April 2009 and Haiti one month ago [12 January 2010] all measured above 6.0 and took many lives. But why was the human cost so much greater for Haiti?
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
Poor construction on buildings.
Corruption.
Being such a rich, advanced and modern country Haiti found its hi-tech systems vulnerable to earthquakes?
//sarc
Seriously. Its dirt poor. It needs liberty and capitalism, badly.
Plus when you get that high on the rochter scale, concrete basically turns liquid.
Gezzz..They have to ask this question??
poor construction because of the lack of rebar in their buildings......steel costs are high when always imported.
For one thing, it appears their building codes prohibit the use of rebar.
and rampant malnurishment amongst the populace. and lack of training and equipment to pull the injured from the rubble quickly. and the list goes on.
This is a situation with a host of contributing factors, rather than a single over riding factor.
Because we evil capitalist white Americans didn’t give up even more of our paychecks to build quakeproof housing for a noble and deserving third world hellhole.
Because the higher you can inflate the numbers, the more international (U.S) $$$ you can expect.
Yes, you know if you live in LA. The building codes are super strict. They add many dollars to any construction on property.
Strict building codes, no pay offs = safety in earthquake conditions.
They don’t even have a fire department. In the whole country.
I don’t think fire was a big issue. It just reveals the incredible lack of resources in what should be a reasonably wealthy country.
True, for century's
I think its the sphincter factor scale
The dirt they could have used to reinforce their buildings they had to eat to survive.
The Haitians would have been inclined to inflate numbers to increase aid, as you suggest. On the flip side, the Chinese would tend to deflate numbers as a matter of pride.
I want to feel safe when I enter into a building in downtown LA that I will be able to survive and that the buiding will not collapse.
Bingo, I did not see one piece of rebar during ALL of the coverage.
A missionary that has worked in Haiti said that while his group in making their own cinder blocks would get around 20 blocks (I forgot the exact number) from a bag of cement, Haitians would make about 80 from the same amount of cement. When the earthquake came the poorly made, mostly sand blocks crumbled. It’s understandable if one doesn’t have much money and can’t afford the building materials that you’ll stretch what you have. But this lean mix of concrete had fatal implications.
Cause George Bush hates black people.
Another factor, besides the poor construction quality, is the construction material.
Concrete in warm countries is fatal during earthquakes.
Cold countries use wood-based materials, for the most part.
OK. . .yes, the poor construction never meant to meet an earthquake and endure. . .nor the population so embedded.
One more thing; the 'rescue' itself.
I have worked on the 25th floor of a building in Brentwood for 19 years. I still do.
My family has lived in So Cal for 150 years. No one has been hurt in an earthquake.
This is true but the ones doing it and getting the money are the aid agencies. There was a transparency international report that 938 million dollars raised for tsunami simply disappeared and the culprits were the aid agencies.
Received this via email 5 minutes ago concerning the recent history of Haiti. It sound reasonable to me.
In the 1700’s what is now Haiti was called the “Jewel of the Caribbean,” and supplied about 40% of the world’s sugar.
In 1791 the government of France passed legislation to phase out slavery in its Caribbean colonies and grant the former Negro slaves citizenship. Rather than becoming citizens, Haiti’s Negro population mass murdered all whites and Mulattoes who could not flee the Island in time. In 1804 only full blooded Negros remained and Haiti became the first Negro ruled nation.
The Haitian revolution dominated America’s debate over slavery. While both the north and the south agreed that slavery should be ended, southerners and a large percentage of northerners universally opposed having a large population of freed slaves living in their midst. The Haitian “Revolution” was fresh in every one’s mind.
Flash forward to 1915. The “Jewel of the Caribbean” is now a desolate cesspool, that is exporting almost no sugar. The United States decides to “take up the white man’s burden” and send the US Marine Corps to rebuild Haiti’s infrastructure and feed it’s starving population. The United States gave huge amounts of money to Haiti and over-saw the building of 1,000 miles of road, telephone lines, modernized its port, and helped Haiti to start exporting sugar once again. The US also put an end to the thousands of bandits along Haiti’s border with the Dominican Republic. The US left in 1934 at the request of the then stabilized and very ungrateful Haitian government.
Haiti immediately sank straight back into total desolation strife. In 1973 the United State once again began playing a huge role in Haiti, giving the Island huge sums of money in handouts each year. In 1994 the Clinton administration once again sent the US military to Haiti to rebuild the Island’s infrastructure. In 1995 the Peace Corps went to Haiti in large numbers to train the Haitians in job skills. The US government spent almost one Billion providing food and job training to the Haitians between 1995 and 1999.
So when Obama says that Haiti has our “full, unwavering, support,” they have already had our full support since 1915..
I liven in LA all my life. The only quake I was injured is when part of a plate glass window sliced my back during the 1994 Northridge quake.
My sis lives in SF. When we went to the horse track/casino here in IN this summer, the first thing she did when she walked in was scan for the exits.
Concrete without steel in it is just not resistant to shaking. I lived in Istanbul as a child in the 50s and I remember every time there was a little shock that might move my bed at night an inch or make me skip a step, a couple of apartment buildings would collapse. I saw one of them after such a joltlet. It was just a pile of rubble. I remember my dad looking at the debris and saying,”No steel, what were they thinking?”
That is what I do when entering a building. I find the exits.
A centralized government forced everyone to move to the main city with zero building codes. The solution is a non-centralized government and reasonable building codes.
Many unscrupulous contractors add sand to the concrete.
WHY?... houses built on and out of sand.. with a little concrete..
Great affluence + no experience outside of wealthy areas = clueless arrogance and condescension
Maybe we should ask Nagin?!
No rebar.
“For one thing, it appears their building codes prohibit the use of rebar.”
I think you are right.
I live in a third world country, but the concrete block houses, such as one that I live in, all have rebar.
Even concrete property boarder walls have rebar.
The wooden houses are so light weight (nepa huts), they would
not likely kill anyone, even if they totally collapsed.
I might add, Philippine people have an IQ that is probably
on the genius level, compared to Haitians.
You cannot avoid strict building codes in LA, You follow them or stop building.
I am grateful for them.
Thank you, I still get a laugh whenever I seen “It’s Bush’s fault” or something similar.
Gravity, the mechanics of materials, and architectural design and engineering.
My whites didn't come as clean as I would have liked for them to be today, and I'm perty darn sure that I would never had to suffer such ills if it were not for those "tax cuts for the rich"
Uncle Sam has “saved” them what, 15-20 times over the past century. We must have built them some buildings over that time. It would be an interesting exercise in real journalism to see how such held up compared to native construction.
Haiti and the tonton macoute
2-minute video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cyGqzgJd3M
Tonton Macoutes (Haitian Creole = bogeymen), personal police force of dictator Francois Duvalier Duvalier, dictator of Haiti 1957–71. (Papa Doc)
Unpaid volunteers who were directly responsible only to Duvalier, they were given virtual license to torture, kill, and extort. They murdered hundreds of Duvalier’s opponents, sometimes publicly hanging the corpses as warnings.
After Papa Doc’s death (1971), his son Jean-Claude Duvalier Duvalier, president of Haiti 1971–86. (Baby Doc)
changed their name to the National Security Volunteers, though they continued to terrorize the citizenry. After the overthrow of Baby Doc in 1986, although officially disbanded, the group continued to spread terror.
Earthquakes don’t kill people.
Buildings kill people.
A: $$$
Building codes. China has ‘em and adheres to them, sort of. Haiti doesn’t.
Also China can handle its own emergencies. Haiti can’t.
CAPITALISM,IMPERIALISM.
LOL - I see you've been reading liberal sites again...
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