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 ...
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...
What’s the common denominator in all these hellholes? You know the answer.
Bingo..., the Richter Scale is logarithmic. A 6.0 quake is 10 times as severe as a 5.0 quake (and so on...). Without VERY well engineered construction, with a lot of high quality steel reinforcement, your typical concrete building reverts to SAND in short order!
There’s more to it than concrete construction w/o rebar, or even concrete construction with concrete diluted with sand.
First the fault ran right under Port au Prince, only the most advanced earthquake-proofing technologies are any good under those conditions (think about the bridge the Japanese built over the earthquake fault with its computer-directed stabilizing motors). Second, one has to explain why a poor country was using concrete, rather than wood. I suspect it has to do with the same foolish land-use policies under the Duvaliers that destroyed Haitian agriculture and made the place subject to landslides and flooding.
I am glad you did that, last time I said that I was deluged with corrections that its actually 100X more not 10. 6.1 is 10X more. or something.
Eureka Ca had a nearby 6.5 quake just 3 days prior to Haiti and we lost a few brick chimneys and one brick building was condemned but they were all built before 1950 when stricter building codes came into effect. This area has probably had 12 quakes 6 or better in 60 years and there are many concrete block buildings here still standing...
cause haiti makes even WORSE concrete than China???
I’m not so sure that Memphis would fare much better if the New Madrid fault let go.
I do not think that they will fare well either. They are just in the beginning stages of retrofitting. They need to retrofit those bridges over the Mississippi. Because they are a vital link to the east. From what I have heard, they are retrofitting the bridges.
Like I said, bad land-use policy. When did the deforestation take place? I’m willing to bet it was under the Duvaliers.
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