chile and haiti

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this might seem like a dumb question, but in the uk where i am. i remember hearing about two massive earthquakes, one in chile, the other haiti. yet i don;t see many charities for chile, but i hear about the obamas visiiting haiti; i thought maybe its the difference in developed status, in that chile is more developed than haiti but it still seems disproportionate to me

thanks avarice poster

Last edited by Topcat16 on 15 Apr 2010, 8:17 pm, edited 2 times in total.

chile is damn near a tropical resort.

Second world actually means a Communist country, not between first and third.

Chile is the most developed country in Latin America; Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Though the Chilean earthquake was much, much stronger (one of the strongest ever recorded) and it was followed by a tsunami, there were far more dead and wounded in Haiti due to better construction in Chile. Also, in Haiti essentially the government collapsed and therefore is going to be doing little reconstruction; in Chile, despite initial looting and imperfect preparedness for the tsunami, the government is more or less on top of things. In short, though Haiti got the weaker earthquake, it was caused far more destruction and Haiti's situation is more dire.

Chile is a civilized industrial country with a disagreeable government. Haiti is and has been for 200 years a primitive place.

ruveyn

pbcoll nailed it. =/

One was communist (Haiti) and the other an Austrian Hayak Friedman free market paradise (Chile) is sadly the official view of this situation.This is of course false in every way but that's what the official view is.

In truth, the earthquake in Haiti took place closer to the ground, and thus was focused on a smaller area but was far more destructive. It also took place under the capital city. The Chile earthquake was deeper in ground and its epicentre was not on a populated area, though populated areas were affected.

Also Chile has a history of very strong earthquakes, including the strongest earthquake ever recorded; they had building codes in place (Oh noes! building codes curtailing personal freedom!) that mandated a certain amount of earthquake readiness to be built into structures. Haiti had few codes and no effective enforcement, despite a history of moderate earthquakes. Also the government of Haiti is notoriously corrupt, and social safety-net structures like disaster-readiness, schools, police, etc. have been cripled by WTO mandates.

The government of Haiti's problem is not so much corruption, it's ineffectiveness. Foreign governments have conditioned aid on cutting the government out and having NGOs control everything and so the state is ineffective.

I have a friend in Viña del Mar, Chile. Viña is a wealthy resort town, but they bounced back from the quake pretty quickly.

Chile is nearly industrialized. In fact, OECD, the club for developed nations, invited Chile into its membership. That being said, the nation is not developed equally. Santiago and the Valparaiso metro area are best developed, while the south is very impoverished.