When disaster strikes
May 17, 2010 • Katie Giel
Filed under News
Haiti, China, Chile, Afghanistan, Papua New Guinea, and the Dominican Republic have all shown us deadly quakes within the first 4 months of this year. Conspiracy theorists, 2012 fearing people, and many others are concerned about the earth’s geologic activity.
And with all the media coverage, even the average citizen is beginning to become concerned. However, scientists say that there is nothing to be concerned about. The US Geological Survey shows that since 1900, the earth has experienced about 16 major earthquakes per year, which would mean that this year is pretty average. It’s certainly not as extreme as 1943’s 32 quakes, but it’s sure to be more rocky than 1986’s six major earthquakes.
Then why is there so much hype over these earthquakes? On April 19th, Foreign Policy Explainer wrote that it hypothesizes that it has a lot to do with media coverage increasing worldwide: “We’re just paying more attention…This weekend’s quake off the coast of the Dominican Republic is thought to have killed only three people and probably wouldn’t have garnered much international attention if not for the catastrophic temblor that struck nearby Haiti in January.”
However, the Dominican Republic’s low fatality rates may be alone. Although the number of quakes isn’t increasing, deaths from each earthquake might be. Studies show that this decade’s earthquakes killed about 650,000 people, which is more than any decade in history. This year alone, 250,000 people have died already. The Huffington Post writes, “The greater the number of people in an area, the greater the number of people that will be affected by a disaster. Higher population densities mean that even if the strength of an earthquake is no greater than before, the number of people and amount of property it will impact is far greater.”
Unfortunately, there may not be an easy solution to this problem. In situations like Haiti, it’s difficult to keep the population density down and maintain that urbanization only occurs away from fault lines. Even more difficult to keep up are the building procedures.
Newsweek concluded in January that, “A stronger Haitian capital will have to include more earthquake-resistant housing.” Unfortunately, this could be very expensive.
Haiti and many other places worldwide may have a lot more work to do in order to ensure their future safety, but hopefully the number of deaths from earthquakes can soon be decreased, even when quake frequency cannot be wavered.
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I think its tragic that all of these earthquakes have devastated these locations.
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