The Disaster Profiteers: How Natural Disasters Make the Rich Richer and the Poor Even Poorer (10 page)

Evidence of liquefaction during an earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2011.

Source: NZ Raw. Photograph by Mark Lincoln of marklincoln.co.nz. Used with permission.

In the figure, it looks like the back end of a car has been sawn off at a bizarre angle and dumped on the ground, but the car has actually sunk into the ground. On the window, you can actually see a high-water mark, suggesting it was even more deeply submerged at one point. You might think someone had the misfortune of driving into a deep pool of mud, but the mud was actually created by shaking during the Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand in 2011. The process, called liquefaction, commonly happens when very soft, wet soil is shaken during an earthquake. Liquefaction typically is seen in portside areas that have been built out with landfill. Much of the Marina District in San Francisco and the southern tip of Manhattan were formed that way using material excavated for the foundations of tall city skyscrapers. Houses in the Marina District were all but submerged in the 1906 earthquake and again during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

The image in figure 2.8 appears in almost every textbook description of liquefaction. It shows a group of buildings in Niigata, Japan, that look identical in construction type. They all experienced the same earthquake on June 16, 1964, but one building is flat on its side, one is tilted half over, another is tilted just a little, and others remain upright. Soil liquefaction is the reason for the earthquake's variable effects, which are obviously very localized. It wasn't bad luck that the one building toppled; it was located on especially weak soil.
24

There are many causes for the very uneven distribution of damage in most earthquakes, but when a fully intact building topples, as shown in figure 2.8, it is a sure sign that ground conditions were the issue.

Figure 2.8

Liquefaction during an earthquake is illustrated in this photo of the aftermath of a quake in Niijata, Japan in 1964.

Source: U.S. Geological Survey

Look back at figure 2.7, the photograph of the sunken car. In the background, next to an apparently undamaged house, is a car in a driveway that is in perfectly good shape, sitting high on what must be solid ground. The fact that it is perhaps 30 yards away from the vehicle in the foreground indicates that the effects of liquefaction and soil conditions in general can be highly localized.

Just as scientists can map faults, they understand how to assess ground conditions. The equipment required is neither expensive nor difficult to operate. Operators do not require high-level training. So like faults, ground conditions can be mapped in almost any setting around the world.

When earthquake waves propagate through the Earth, they shake different types of ground by varying amounts with distinct results. Even if the ground doesn't fully liquefy, it responds very differently according to the type of rock layers, their age, the extent of weathering, and many other factors. Very loose soil shakes more than very solid ground.
25
This variable effect often accounts for much of the difference in damage from place to place. Liquefaction is an extreme expression of this effect.

Topography makes a difference too. Just as the shape of a glass lens in a telescope or magnifying glass focuses light energy, the shape
of Earth's surface and the rock layers beneath can focus seismic energy. Sharply peaked ridges, for instance, can show particularly severe fracturing (sometimes described as shattering by geotechnicians). Small depressions of softer rocks can cause seismic energy to reverberate and amplify, causing more severe local shaking than in surrounding areas.

The net result is that the damage caused by an earthquake can appear capricious, with completely collapsed buildings next to others that show little if any damage. Older buildings may remain in good condition while newer ones are severely damaged. Of course, more damage might be expected in poor countries where governance is weak and/or corruption levels are high. But good governance and low corruption are no guarantees of suffering less damage. New Zealanders were fairly astonished when the relatively modern Canterbury Television Building collapsed, causing more than half the total deaths in the 2011 quake. It had been inspected several times after earlier earthquakes and was found to be in good condition. The construction was sound and up to code. The ground was solid and suitable for the size of the structure. No one was bribed. No one cut corners. No one cheated. Yet the building collapsed. After a royal commission investigation, no one was charged.

Many people in the New Zealand governance system are well versed in earthquake hazard assessment. The island country experiences many earthquakes, and people there have learned a lot about how to make buildings earthquake resistant. In fact, almost everyone trained in seismology anywhere in the world has studied the earthquakes of New Zealand. The nation has very stringent building codes and strict enforcement. After every quake, no matter how small, buildings are inspected and their safety is assessed. Unsafe buildings are closed until they are properly repaired and have passed inspection or are torn down. In 2013, New Zealand tied with Denmark as the
least corrupt place in the world, as rated by Transparency International.
26
Haiti ranked number 163 of 177 countries rated. For comparison, the United States came in nineteenth, tied with Uruguay.

It is important to recognize that buildings collapse and people die in well-governed countries with almost no corruption and in highly corrupt countries with almost no governance. There is little doubt that many fewer buildings typically collapse during earthquake disasters in advanced countries than in poor places. We can hope that what happened at Rana Plaza is an extreme outlier, but there can be little doubt that other buildings of the same sort are ready to fall at the slightest tremor and that tens of thousands of people—perhaps millions, as geological sciences professor Roger Bilham suggests—risk their lives by working in them or visiting them for school, shopping, or any of the most common acts of daily life. Corruption in the building industry is a major problem, but it is wrong to point the finger of blame at corrupt officials every time a building collapses and people are killed in an earthquake.

The bottom line is this: Earthquakes cannot be predicted, so the best thing any country can do is understand how prone it is to quakes, how likely large quakes might be, how the risks are distributed, and how strong the ground is and then not build in risky places. If there is no chance to restrict areas for development, then the strength of built structures in risky areas should be assessed. Any built structures that can be made stronger should be, especially schools and bridges. But because doing so can be very expensive, abandoning the most unsafe structures may be required.

Now compare the maps in figures 2.1 and 2.2 with that of cyclone tracks in figure 2.5. There might seem to be a strong case that cyclones have a role in determining poverty levels, but it is not wholly
convincing at this coarse level of analysis. Atlantic hurricanes primarily affect the Caribbean and southern United States. Those states (and Washington, DC) are the poorest by far in the United States. Latin America is on the whole progressing fairly well economically, but the Caribbean region is doing less well, with Haiti the leading example of economic struggle. The Central American countries are poor as well and are impacted by numerous natural hazards—hurricanes, earthquakes, and volcanic activity. The Philippines sits at the dead center of where Pacific typhoons reach their maximum strength; it is also a poor country compared to its neighbors, which are less impacted by typhoons.

Tropical cyclones are, after all, tropical in their geography. As Sachs and Nordhaus have pointed out, tropical regions are the least productive in the world.
27
Tropical cyclones rarely reach into the temperate, most productive parts of the world. Look at the maps in figure 2.1, and you will see that much economic activity is coastal in its distribution. The reason is that it is much easier to manage trade from the coast than from inland. Many of the world's greatest cities are on the coastal outlets of rivers, which allow goods produced inland to be shipped easily to port. New York on the Hudson and London on the Thames are leading examples.

Of course, scholars might argue that there many reasons why these countries and states have evolved to different levels of development, including important factors like the legacy of colonial rule. Proneness to cyclone strikes might well be part of the reason for the uneven distribution of wealth, but it would be hard to make the case that it is
the
reason.

But, as in the case for earthquakes, that's not so much the point. Cyclones will keep happening, just as earthquakes will. But with climate change we can expect cyclones to change their strength distribution to include more cyclones in the highest category and to range
farther to the north and the south. People will continue to live in places prone to cyclone strikes because of the advantages those areas offer and will do their best to improve their own welfare. The best thing cyclone-prone societies can do is understand the risks as much as possible, try not to build in the most hazardous places, and provide protections in places that are already populated. Protections here don't mean structural features of buildings but rather seawalls and other barriers to withstand storm surges. The strategy is essentially the same as for earthquake: assess the physical risks, then protect or move.

There is a problem here, and it is not trivial. It goes back to the maps in figure 2.1 and what they tell us. As noted, these maps indicate both where wealth is produced and where science is produced. There is almost nowhere in Africa, except in South Africa, where someone can obtain a PhD in seismology or climatology. Some countries on the continent have never registered a patent for anything (a measure often used to judge scientific acumen), and many of these countries lack the institutional structure to issue patents anyway. The same is true for Haiti, which has one seismologist. What results is that there is little local notion of the risks that poor countries face based on the work of their own scientists.

The paradox is that scientists working in relatively safe places like Europe, where earthquake and cyclone risks are low, know more about risks to poor countries than people in those countries know themselves. The largess of wealthy countries is needed to provide poor countries with information about their risks, to help train local scientists, and to set up monitoring networks, but typically funds are hard to come by.

There is only one working seismometer in Myanmar, and it is over 50 years old. There was only one in Gujarat, India, when the
Bhuj earthquake struck in 2001, killing perhaps 20,000 people. In the wake of that earthquake, and with the help of funds from the Asian Development Bank, an Institute of Seismological Research was established in Gandhinagar; a network of 60 seismometers and 54 strong motion accelerograms has been set up as well.
28
In a decade or so of recording, Gujarat will have a much improved idea of its seismic risks.

The fact that poor countries have few, if any, seismometers typically is not due to poor governance. Myanmar had established a larger (though still inadequate) network in the 1960s. The seismometers were donated by the United States, Japan, or China, and all but one fell into disuse during Myanmar's period of military rule.

Many poorer countries have much higher priorities than determining their earthquake risks. For example, in poor tropical countries, malaria typically kills many more people annually than do earthquakes. Death comes from poor-quality water more often than from the shaking of the ground, so the national priority should be to clean up the water supply. More souls would be saved per dollar spent on water improvement than on earthquake engineering.

A similar scenario applies to cyclones—in fact, to most natural disasters. Superstorm Sandy may have been a perfect storm in many meteorologically interesting ways, but it was close to a perfectly predicted storm as well. All forms of media provided constant warnings for days in advance, evacuation protocols were determined, and people were moved out of low-lying areas. There was considerable storm surge damage, especially to beachfront towns, and power was lost in many inland regions for four days or more. Transportation systems were interrupted for much longer. Many people were inconvenienced, but relatively few were killed. Using Red Cross data, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention put the total number of fatalities
in the United States at 117. New York suffered more deaths than other states. Many who died drowned in their homes in areas where evacuation orders had been issued. This was also the case for seafront residents of Mississippi when Hurricane Katrina came ashore in 2005. The death toll would likely have been around half the total had everyone been willing or able to heed the evacuation orders. Compared to the many millions of people who experienced the storm, 117 deaths is a tiny number. Statistically it could be treated as effectively a zero fatality event—completely characteristic of a disaster in a rich country. A storm like Sandy would certainly have killed many more people had it made landfall in a place like Bangladesh, the country that may hold the all-time record for cyclone fatalities.