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Haiti Quake More Destructive Than 2004 Tsunami: Study
PORT-AU-PRINCE - The scale of devastation in Haiti is far worse than in Asia after the 2004 tsunami, a study has said, estimating the cost of last month's earthquake at up to 14 billion dollars.
A Haitian doctor vaccinates a Haitian boy at a camp set up for people displaced from their homes in Jacmel on February 10. The World Health Organization on Wednesday urged medical aid agencies to stay in Haiti as long as possible while health care is rebuilt following last month's devastating earthquake.
(AFP/Ariel Marinkovic) The report released yesterday from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) raised the possibility that the quake could be the most destructive disaster in modern history.
Its stark assessment comes with Port-au-Prince still lying in ruins more than one month on, while the bodies of more than 200,000 dead pile up in mass graves outside the capital.
The study's release coincided with what would normally be Haiti's annual carnival, an explosion of pulsing music and colorful parades. But this year, the events have been cancelled as no one is in the mood to party.
The preliminary IDB report estimated the damage at between eight and 14 billion dollars in what was already the poorest country in the Americas before the catastrophe.
Factoring in Haiti's population and economic output, the upper estimate would make it the most destructive natural disaster in modern history, the bank said. Related article: Haiti gang turf wars
"Indeed, in this respect the Haiti earthquake was vastly more destructive than the Indonesian tsunami of 2004 and the cyclone that hit Myanmar in 2008," an IDB statement said.
"It caused five times more deaths per million inhabitants than the second-ranking natural killer, the 1972 earthquake in Nicaragua."
Haiti officials say more than 217,000 people were killed in the quake, or about 2.4 percent of the country's population of nine million.
The 14-billion-dollar figure is the Washington-based bank's upper estimate for the cost of reconstructing homes, schools, streets and other infrastructure in Haiti following the January 12 quake.
The IDB said a more detailed accounting of the situation would come in the following months but that its preliminary study showed that the reconstruction cost was likely to be far higher than anticipated.
Meanwhile, Haiti's carnival celebrations, usually the culmination of weeks of parties, were replaced by mourning.
"Everybody's sad," said Nanotte Verly, a 48-year-old mother of nine who lost her home in the quake and sells jewelry and wooden plaques praising Jesus on a roadside. "All the buildings are still collapsed on the ground."
More than a million Haitians are still homeless following the earthquake, living in squalid camps in and around the capital.
The traditional center of carnival celebrations, the Champ de Mars park across from the collapsed National Palace, is now a sprawling homeless camp housing some 16,000 people in a maze of tents made of scrap wood and sheets.
Lemaire Sicard, 37, lives at the site and spoke of how the Champ de Mars would be filled with revelers and partying in years past.
"But now there's nothing," he said. "It's not possible. There are people from this area who were hurt -- deaths also."
While aid workers rush to distribute tarpaulins before the rainy season starts, the United Nations says only about 272,000 people have been provided with shelter materials so far.
On his second day in Haiti to give a boost to the relief effort, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper visited Canadian troops in Leogane, a town largely wiped out by the quake where the soldiers are helping set up a hospital.
Harper had earlier said Canada would set up a semi-permanent, 11-million-dollar headquarters for the Haitian government, which currently operates out of a police building because the palace and many government ministries were destroyed in the quake.
In a positive sign for the quake-torn country, American Airlines said it would resume the first commercial flights to Haiti on Friday.
6 Comments so far
Show AllA very sad story, to be sure, but there's an odd angle to this tale of destruction that doesn't quite make sense to me. Why, if the quake was so powerfully destructive, was no tsunami generated? Since the earthquake was centered on a port city, it should have triggered some powerful tidal waves. I'm glad it didn't, but does anybody know why?
Thanks
Several points:
1. Tidal waves are not tsunamis. Tsunamis happen due to movement of the sea floor, which displaces large amounts of water.
2. There might have been a tsunami if the quake was centered on the sea floor, resulting in large displacement of water. Fortunately, the quake wasn't.
3. It also depends on the type of earthquake. Quakes that occur in certain zones are more likely to cause tsunamis, subduction zones: where one tectonic plate moves under another, when they move towards each other, resulting in displacement / deformation of the seafloor, and displacement of water..
To Rfloh - thanks. I see why there was no tsunami, thankfully. But wouldn't tidal waves of some degree be expected, ie on the Island (Gonave) across the bay from Port au Prince, if not all the way up the Haitian coast or on to Cuba?
When you say tidal waves, are you referring to a smaller tsunami? You're referring here to a more localised tsunami as opposed to a trans-oceanic one?
They had a warning of a possible tsunami issued when the quake occurred, but later withdrew it.
Luckily serious tsunamis aren't necessarily all that common, though they aren't rare, they don't just occur whenever there is an earthquake in a coastal area. The key part is that the quake wasn't centered on the sea floor. For a tsunami to occur, the quake has to occur below water, to cause the deformation of the seafloor to displace the water.
It is most common in Japan, island nation in an area with high volcanic / earthquake activity, hence the Japanese name. Also why coastal cities in Japan tend to have measures to attempt to mitigate the forces generated by a tsunami. It isn't all that common outside Japan / East Asia, the vast majority of them happen in the Pacific, hence the widespread and common use of the Japanese name, which is why it can be so devastating; many people, until the 2004 Indonesian tsunami, weren't aware of the concept, unless they watched / read a lot of Nat Geo when they were kids, like me. *grin*
I'm no geologist, just somewhat interested in tsunamis since childhood, so if you want precise mathematical / geophysical answers as to why they occur or not, I can't help; and there is still a lot of ongoing research into the exact reasons as to why they occur or not.
"Harper had earlier said Canada would set up a semi-permanent, 11-million-dollar headquarters for the Haitian government, which currently operates out of a police building because the palace and many government ministries were destroyed in the quake."
What a priority since the rainy season is starting and the people have been given some tarps for shelters, but not enough, and their destroyed houses are still lying on the ground untouched.
By the time the prosperous, full-bellied, well-housed folks from various nations get their act together next month or the month after to sit around their conference tables to discuss what should be done for the Haitians, many more of these poor people and their babies and little children may be buried in mud slides from the treeless hills which were cut down and denuded for them to have some firewood for cooking and warmth.
The insensitive lack of urgency is the usual craziness to the nth power.
/cm
This is so sad, as recovering from this will take a long time. How is the 9th Ward doing, years after Katrina? What about L'Aguelia in Italy?
I read once that after the quake in Afghanistan that yurts were provided for the people to get away from the winter snow, Who makes these, and wouldn't they be better than tarps over mud?
Maybe there needs to be a way to build little geodesic domes ( a la Buckminster Fuller) and build little igloos out of all of our plastic waste, so that people would have shelter from the rainy season in Haiti. At a certain level, home becomes much less important than basic survival shelter.
Maybe too, green jobs will develop shelter units which will serve as a kind of shelter for everyone, as I don't expect hurricanes, earthquakes, or tornadoes to ever stop.
It may also come to the point when Nature gives us no choice, and the corporatization of the world, with his ecological disasters, will find many parts of the world, and even our own country learning to live with much less than we ever imagined.