Posted on 02/27/2010 9:34:59 PM PST by thecodont
(02-27) 17:44 PST PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) --
The earthquake in Chile was far stronger than the one that struck Haiti last month — yet the death toll in this Caribbean nation is magnitudes higher.
The reasons are simple.
Chile is wealthier and infinitely better prepared, with strict building codes, robust emergency response and a long history of handling seismic catastrophes. No living Haitian had experienced a quake at home when the Jan. 12 disaster crumbled their poorly constructed buildings.
And Chile was relatively lucky this time.
Saturday's quake was centered offshore an estimated 21 miles (34 kilometers) underground in a relatively unpopulated area while Haiti's tectonic mayhem struck closer to the surface — about 8 miles (13 kilometers) — and right on the edge of Port-au-Prince, factors that increased its destructiveness.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/02/27/international/i145740S25.DTL&tsp=1#ixzz0go1phhLU
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
"When you look at the architecture in Chile you see buildings that have damage, but not the complete pancaking that you've got in Haiti," said Cameron Sinclair, executive director of Architecture for Humanity, a 10-year-old nonprofit that has helped people in 36 countries rebuild after disasters.
Sinclair said he has architect colleagues in Chile who have built thousands of low-income housing structures to be earthquake resistant.
In Haiti, by contrast, there is no building code.
Uhhh...yeah, and in Chile when the dictator steals the national wealth, they tend not to send ALL of it to Switzerland...maybe just half...
That uh...prolly has something to do with it, too...
Chile might have property rights ... Haiti doesn’t.
Chile is one of the best run countries in Latin America. It is more like Switzerland then kleptocracies like Argentin and Venezuela. They privatized Social Security while Argentina recently confiscated the private savings of the population.
Haiti is a nightmarish disaster. Always has been, always will be. The place is so disfunctional that there may be something to that voodoo curse.
Its called rebar and a strict building code.
Those damn capitalists in Chile!
not just the builders - it’s criminal how the government (and relief agencies) of an island nation like Haiti had no disaster preparedness training for it’s citizens. I’ll never get the image of that young man who had written people’s names he was “protecting” down on a piece of paper with a pencil, and when asked by the reporter who he would give the paper to, he said, I don’t know, but writing down the names was all I knew to do. They simply didn’t know what to do. There was no process in place, no starting point for them, no education given. It’s a crying shame.
Thanks to Aristede and his enables in our own government, Haiti was looted, raped, and compromised for decades.
Marxine Waters and assorted other communists want to re-instate Aristede so they can participate in another round of looting.
I count bubba clinton in that cabal of looters.
Chile is one of the most conservative countries in Latin America. It has had a center-left government for the last few terms, but even they have been basically conservative. It just elected an overtly conservative president from a conservative party, a Chilean billionaire who wants to rev up Chile’s economy even more.
As a result, Chile is the third-wealthiest country in the hemisphere, after the US and Canada. That doesn’t mean they don’t have problems or pockets of poverty, particularly among the indigenous population, but they are light-years away from almost any of the other countries there, particularly as the others sink more deeply into socialism.
About right...
Most of the money sent to the victims of Haiti will end up in Swiss banks...
This is why I’ll send money to Chile, not to Haiti.
Chile has a government that exists for the people. Haiti has one that exists for themselves. We have a government somewhere in the middle.
Well yes - that is all true and thank GOD for Chile that they have the government that they have!
And the building codes that they have!
But that was not all that was going on.
Whew - go look on this thread with the photos from the damage in Chile: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2460951/posts
And yet the report is that there were only several hundred who were killed? Not thousands? Not hundreds of thousands as those pictures indicate SHOULD have happened?
God Himself intervened and prevented the additional huge loss of lives - because God is merciful and kind and is not willing that any man should die - apart from the Lord!
While He is JUST and the JUDGE - He takes no delight in the death of the wicked....
As He said in John 3:16 and 17 - Jesus came into the world because God so loved the world (the people in it) that He sent His Only begotten Son into the World that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but shall have everlasting life.
He did not send His Son into the world that the world through Him might be judged - but that the world through Him might be saved!
Judgement is coming - that’s for sure.
But God’s plan and work is to see to it that as many souls are saved for all eternity to be with HIM and with all His saints - forever more!
Hallelujah - what a Savior!
Haiti has quakes all the time. This was just a more destructive one.
Imagine if all your schools were built by the lowest bidder and there was no oversight. That’s Haiti
I was in Mexico once and they were building a 2 story building, they used cardboard for reinforcement.
Just like saying "Bush knew we were in a War on Islamic Terrorists, Øbama does not." However... 
while Haiti will take a long time to rebuild and may never learn the lesson, we can start stopping our mistake in November of this year and have it on the road to total reversal in 2012.
Ditto!!!
rebar is the key.
I posted this Vanity the Saturday morning:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2460504/posts
I beat AP by a wide margin. Of course, AP dear not mention it was Pincohet who set Chile on its course of being the richest nation in Latin America.
But the lack of a major tsunami event was also Bush’s fault too, right???
I think the economy is headed for the dumper, no matter who is in office in 2012.
Way too much damage has been done.
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