Chile Quake

Chile’s 8.8 earthquake illustrates that Haiti’s disaster wasn’t an ‘act of God’ but simply the result of centuries of poverty and exploitation. The Chilean quake was 100 times stronger but total deaths there will add up less than 1% of those in Haiti. Chile has fairly strict seismic construction regulations, and the capital city’s 30-plus-story apartment towers [above] will sway a full meter at the top without causing any structural damage—which is not to say that it’s a pleasant experience if you’re up there.

While the older adobe structures can pancake and kill a lot of people in rural areas, the country factors in hits like yesterday’s every 20 years or so as a fact of topography. There are good emergency medical services, and organized first responders are moderately efficient. The last earthquake in 1985 occurred under the famously abusive rule of one Augusto Pinochet, so of course a lot of the aid that poured in got siphoned off by corrupt military consuls and their friends. But only about 120 people died in that one, which registered 7.7 on the Richter scale, still far more powerful than the Haitian quake [right].

It’s awfully annoying to keep hearing the Red Cross milk the tragedy and the oily Bill Clinton-George W. Bush ads on the radio every morning asking us to send cash to a country neither one of them helped when they were the most powerful men on earth. My donation went to a small development agency with a long history in the country and let’s say a skeptical view of the current hand-wringing performances that will soon be winding down as the TV images no longer compel, and CNN moves on to something sexier.