Intelligent Design strikes again.

The conclusion to this piece is very very important indeed, and has to do with the concentration of people in already dense cities. It does bring about questions about the way in which Haiti was reported on, that somewhere that ‘an earthquake 100 times more powerful will only kill a 100th as many people’ as a place like Haiti asks uncomfortable questions about poverty, that should not come about as a result of tragedy and disaster. The appalling conclusion also (and not appalling because it has been said, but appalling as it is right) that the Chile news is underwhelming.

It’s not just buildings, it’s the response and emergency services too. Haiti had no set up for what they faced, Chile lives on the basis that it’s likely to happen.

The biggest problem in Port-au-Prince was due to the city being built on earth rather than rocky ground. The soil fluidises in an earthquake so structures are far more likely to collapse. Add the effects of poverty, corruption and density of habitation and you have a huge death toll.

Its early days in the Chile quake and there are tsunamis to come. Don’t be too hasty to conclude anything.

here is a blog post linking to research into the relationship between poverty and deaths resulting from natural disasters: http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/02/the-elasticity-of-natural-disaster-deaths-with-respect-to-income.html

Your figures are wrong.

According to the figures on this page…:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moment_magnitude_scale

…a magnitude 8.8 earthquake will have just over 500 times the energy of a magnitude 7.0 quake.

The calculation is left as an exercise for the reader.

While I agree with A Libertarian that your figures are wrong, they are not wrong in the way s/he suggests.

It is claimed that the earthquake was “nearly 100 times more powerful” than the Haiti one.

Now “power” can mean different things. To a physicist like myself, it is essentially energy over time.

But to a layman, it doesn’t really mean that. In the colloquial sense, “power” could mean “energy” as A Libertarian says.

However, it could also mean “how much shaking was there?” i.e. the amplitude. This could also be a more useful term than energy, since just quoting energy does not tell you how it was dissipated.

And the amount of shaking works exactly as Left Outside thought it did:

Chile – Mag 8.8
Haiti – Mag 7.0

8.8 – 7.0 = 1.8

Number of times more “powerful” = 10^1.8

But this is where I disagree with Left Outside, since 10^1.8 is about 63, which is not “nearly 100″. Unfortunately, small differences in exponents (like between 10^1.8 and 10^2) can be deceiving.

“But poverty and corruption meant that any disaster which struck Haiti would have an impact out of proportion to what we would expect anywhere else.”

You and Massie aren’t the only people to have made this link. Yes, poverty kills people rather more than natural disasters do. We should thus be promoting economic development in the best manner we know how.

There are those out there who seem to think that economic development doesn’t matter: or at least, not as much as equality say, or fairness, or some other value (the environment?) which should be put ahead of mere physical wealth.

Not a view I subscribe to, you won’t be surprised to hear.

Another aspect is where there has been no earthquakes in the last 200 years. Consequently there is tendency not to design buildings or site them in safer locations. Japan has history of earthquakes and the traditional homes were designed in part to cope with them.

After the earthquake near Indonesia , there was a cocnern that inhabitants of some islands in the Indian Ocean would have been killed. However, the folklore said if the sea retreated , then the people should flee to the high ground: they did and were saved. The probelm is that is a building is to resist shocks from an earthquake, it needs tensile strength, which invariable comes from steel.

In addition, if there has been heavy rain on steep slopes with thick soil cover , then it can become fluid , leading to a mud flow.