Hi. I’m wondering if there are other places in the developing world where an earthquake like that in Haiti could occur. I recall Pakistan and and El Salvador have had severe earthquakes in recent years. Is it just a matter of severity before they have a death tool that is near that in Haiti (i.e, in the tens of thousands, minimum)?
I.e., where else in the world has the lack of urban planning and housing codes set up a (nearly) similar scenario that is ticking?
I can think of major quakes with huge death tolls that have occurred in the past 20 years or so in Armenia (late '80s), Turkey (several in succession during the late '90s- early 2000’s), Iran, and China (both within the past few years). These quakes may have temporarily relieved some tectonic strain, but they indicate seismically active areas where other earthquakes may be likely. The Great Rift Valley in eastern Africa is, I believe, also an active area, although I don’t know much about population sizes or densities in the region.
You may not have to look to the developing world for locations of horrific future earthquakes. Tokyo (population 30 million) has been called The City Waiting to Die.
And on September 1, 1923, it did.
I’m just looking at the wiki entry now and there really was a “perfect storm” of conditions that added to the nightmare.
–Just before lunch, which everyone was cooking on open flames
–Traditional houses composed of sticks and paper, ie, tinder
–Ground shakes, dumping tinder onto fire in 1000’s of individual locations
–High winds due to nearby typhoon spread fire
Mexico, Chile and Peru are all in danger to some degree. I’m not sure how fair it is to call them developing, but they do all have populations living without building codes that we’d consider sufficient.
Yep, I know people who go down to Mexico City and build houses for the poor, kinda like Habitat for Humanity. There is absolutely no code enforcement on these homes and they are made of cinder block and mortar with no reinforcement. When (not if) these homes are hit by a major quake they will likely collapse. If a well sited earthquake hits Mexico City I think the death toll could reach multiple millions. And that is in a city that is vastly better developed than Port-au-Prince. But the response would be easier and faster. I am hard pressed to think of another 3+ million person city with as poor of an infrastructure.
Here are the cities I can find that could be considered to be in the developing world (as decided by me), with at least 2.5 million people, which are on or near major faults.
In the Americas: Bogotá, Cali, Caracas, Guadalajara, Guatemala City, Lima, Medellín, Mexico City, Monterrey, Port-au-Prince, San Juan, Santiago, and Santo Domingo
In Africa: Addis Abeba, Johannesburg, and Pretoria. Maybe Alexandria, Cairo, Dar es Salaam, Durban, and Nairobi but earthquake data for them is sketchy at the sites I was looking at.
In Asia: Aleppo, Amman, Baghdad, Bandung, Chittagong, Dacca, Damascus, Delhi, Jaipur, Jakarta, Kabul, Kanpur, Karachi, Lahore, Lucknow, Lyallpur, Manila, Medan, Meshed, Patna, Rangoon, Rawalpindi, Surabaya, Tashkent, Tehran and about 30 more cities in China (I got tired of counting).
So by my count there are plenty of big population centers which likely have poor building codes, but only a few (like Addis Abeba) seem to have nearly as bad of infrastructure as Port-au-Prince.
I don’t think the population of Tokyo is 30 million. I think it’s about 12 million.
One of the biggest problems in Haiti was the total lack of any infrastructure - no fire service, no ambulances, barely any roads, even. The only place that strikes me as similar would be Mogadishu in Somalia. It’s not in an earthquake zone, but a passing typhoon could wreck some pretty horrific damage.
My understanding is that the population of Tokyo and its surrounding suburbs is 30 million. New York City is similar - there are 8 million in the city proper, but 30 million in the ‘metropolitan area.’
Thanks! Do you (or other readers) have any sources or links to the names of the fault lines under those locations (may be just for Americas if this is too extensive a request)? I’d like to provide a little citation for this for a blog posting on this topic and/or for an op-ed I’d like to write up on this.