The Disaster Profiteers: How Natural Disasters Make the Rich Richer and the Poor Even Poorer (30 page)

17.
John C. Mutter, “Voices: Italian Seismologists: What Should They Have Said?”
Earth Magazine,
July 1, 2010,
http://www.earthmagazine.org/article/voices-italian-seismologists-what-should-they-have-said
.

18.
Tia Ghose, “L'Aquila Earthquake Forces Geologists to Rethink Risk,”
Live Science,
December 11, 2012,
http://www.livescience.com/25420-laquila-earthquake-lessons.html
.

19.
For more on fault creep, see United States Geological Survey, “Haywood—Creeping Fault,”
geomaps.wr.usgs.gov/sfgeo/quaternary/stories/hayward_creep.html
.

20.
Roger Bilhan, “The Seismic Future of Cities,”
Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering
7, no. 4 (November 2009): 839–87. See also an interview with Bilham at World Bank, “Seismic Future of Cities. Interview with Dr. Roger Bilham,” February 22, 2011,
http://go.worldbank.org/GTQ1AL0AG0
.

21.
Travis Daub, “China's War on Illegal Buildings,”
The Rundown
(blog), PBS Newshour, August 17, 2010,
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/chinas-war-on-illegal-buildings/
.

22.
“Workers Forced to Join Work,”
Daily Star,
April 25, 2013,
http://archive.thedailystar.net/beta2/news/workers-forced-to-join-work
.

23.
Mark Lincoln, “New Christchurch Earthquake Photos,”
NZ Raw
(blog), February 24, 2011,
http://www.nzraw.co.nz/news/new-christchurch-earthquake-photos/
.

24.
A good basic introduction to this material can be found at Charles J. Ammon, “Earthquake Effects,” Department of Geosciences, Penn State University, n.d.,
http://eqseis.geosc.psu.edu/~cammon/HTML/Classes/IntroQuakes/Notes/earthquake_effects.html
.

25.
The reason is that the speed at which earthquake waves travel depends on the material properties of the rocks through which they travel. More rigid rocks propagate energy at higher velocity. Loose soil is not rigid and propagates energy quite slowly. When a seismic wave that has been traveling through strong rocks encounters loose soil, it slows down, but because the wave carries the same amount of energy, the energy is concentrated in a smaller region, causing greater shaking. The energy piles up and increases the amplitude of shaking. The effect is quite like the way the height of a tsunami wave increases as the wave enters shallow water near a coast. Areas of infill within solid rock regions can amplify shaking considerably. Because of this fact, considerable effort is put into seismic microzonation, in which soil properties are measured and maps are produced that show where the greatest shaking is likely to occur. Such measurements can guide first responders to areas most likely to be damaged in an earthquake and help planners in fortifying existing public structures and siting new ones.

26.
Suzanne Snively, “New Zealand Tops 2013 Corruption Perceptions Index,” Transparency International, December 3, 2013,
http://www.transparency.org/news/pressrelease/new_zealand_tops_2013_corruption_perceptions_index
.

27.
This needs to be qualified a little. The polar regions are also not very productive because of the harsh environment. As in the tropics, wealth can be generated in such regions, but typically only through resource extraction.

28.
The latest annual report (2012–13) of the Institute of Seismological Research can be found at
http://www.isr.gujarat.gov.in/images/pdf/APR%202012-13.pdf
. I traveled with a colleague, Arthur Lerner-Lam, to Gujarat several times to advise the government on how to structure the institute in the two years before it was established.

29.
Generally, poor countries have much better systems in place to monitor the weather than to monitor earthquakes. Basic meteorological measurements are easier to make than seismic measurements and much less costly. As with the mapping of faults, colonial powers, especially Britain, installed weather stations and operated meteorological services in their colonies, because they knew local weather was important to the crops they wanted to produce and export. Typically colonial systems were established as replicas of systems that operated in the home country. Some British colonies, especially India, experienced devastating droughts and famines that were egregiously mismanaged by the colonizers, in part, one can suppose, because they had no experience of droughts of such massive scales. (An arresting account of the massive mismanagement and catastrophic death toll in Indian droughts can be found in
Late Victorian Holocausts
by Mike Davis.)

In many instances, when and if postcolonial countries established seismometer networks, they used the sites established for meteorological observations, and very often they attached their operations to whatever meteorological service existed. This made perfectly good sense from a management perspective. The sites were already prepared and visited routinely, and the same personnel could be trained to ensure the seismometers operated correctly. Unfortunately, an ideal site for a meteorological station may not be very suitable for seismic observations. In fact, the two have nothing at all to do with one another, and many seismometers that exist in poorer countries are less than ideally located.

Today, extensive satellite observation systems available throughout the world are openly available to practically everyone, and there is little reason to be surprised by a bad weather event. Countries have very different capacities to receive and analyze this sort of information and rely on local readings from ground-based instruments. Those with high-level capacity often share information with regional neighbors that have less capability, although data sharing can be difficult with isolated states, such as Myanmar and North Korea. The meteorological office in India is quite sophisticated and has its own satellites. Bad weather scenarios, such as failure of the monsoon or droughts associated with El Niño, have devastating effects on the Indian economy, and weather forecasting has been of the highest priority in the country for more than a century. Although adjacent countries are equally affected by the weather, their capabilities are not as advanced as India's.

Chapter 3. Carnage in the Caribbean, Chaos in Concepción

1.
Jonathan M. Katz,
The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

2.
P. Cockburn, “Haiti's Elite Haunted by Fear of Revenge: Supporters of the Embattled Military Regime Dread a Bloody Repeat of 1791 When Tormented Slaves Massacred Their Rich Masters,”
The Independent,
July 18, 1994.

3.
Mike Davis, “Planet of Slums,”
New Left Review
26 (2004): 5–34.

4.
Pure Water for the World, “Transforming the Lives of Children & Families Struggling in Cité Soleil, Haiti,” 2015,
http://purewaterfortheworld.org/our-projects-cite-soleil-1000-homes.html
.

5.
CIA,
The World Factbook: Haiti,
March 11, 2015,
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ha.html
.

6.
Ibid.

7.
Several sources say Haiti is the most violent place on Earth. See Sudhir Muralidhar, “Gangs of Port-au-Prince,”
The American Prospect,
March 11, 2015,
http://prospect.org/article/gangs-port-au-prince
. The article quotes the UN as the source of that assessment without being specific about the UN agency that makes the assessment. Asger Leth's documentary film
Ghosts of Cité Soleil
(A. Leth and M. Loncarevic, directors, 2007), documents life and death in the gangs of Port-au-Prince.

8.
Richard Sanders, “Chimère, the ‘N' Word of Haiti,”
Press for Conversion!
no. 61 (2007): 50–51,
http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/61/50-51.pdf
.

9.
Athena R. Kolbe, “Revisiting Haiti's Gangs and Organized Violence,”
Humanitarian Action in Situations Other than War Discussion Paper
5 (2013): 1–36,
http://hasow.org/uploads/trabalhos/101/doc/449921257.pdf
; United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, “MINUSTAH Facts and Figures,” October 14, 2014,
http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missions/minustah/facts.shtml
.

10.
UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti, “MINUSTAH Facts and Figures.”

11.
Daniele Lantagne, G. Balakrish Nair, Claaudio F. Lanata, and Alejando Cravioto, “The Cholera in Haiti: Where and How Did It Begin?”
Current Topics in Microbiology and Immunology,
2013. A good summary can be found at
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/relief-and-reconstruction-watch/uns-own-independent-experts-now-say-minustah-troops-most-likely-caused-cholera-epidemic
.

12.
One measurement of inequality is Gini. Evans Jardotte has estimated that Haiti's Gini coefficient is 0.6457. This coefficient runs from 0, which indicates perfect equality, to 1.0, representing maximum inequality. Only Namibia is more unequal than Haiti, according to Jardotte, although other sources place South Africa and several other African countries higher. The Gini is a statistical measure of income inequality derived by taking the difference between the actual distribution of incomes (modeled by a Lorenz function) and a hypothetical perfect equality, meaning that, for instance, 5 percent of the population holds 5 percent of the wealth, 20 percent holds 20 percent wealth, et cetera. Evans Jardotte, “Income Distribution and Poverty in the Republic of Haiti,” Partnership for Economic Policy—Poverty Monitoring, Measurement and Analysis, paper provided by PEP-PMMA in its series
Working Papers PMMA
with number 2006-13.

13.
Oxfam, “Working for the Few: Political Capture and Economic Inequality,” Oxfam Briefing Paper 178 (2014): 1–6,
https://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/bp-working-for-few-political-capture-economic-inequality-200114-summ-en.pdf
.

14.
World Bank, “Investing in People to Fight Poverty in Haiti,” Washington, DC, 2015,
http://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/Worldbank/document/Poverty%20documents/Haiti_PA_overview_web_EN.pdf
.

15.
Deborah Sontag, “Years after Haiti Quake, Safe Housing Is a Dream for Many,”
New York Times,
August 15, 2012,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/16/world/americas/years-after-haiti-quake-safe-housing-is-dream-for-multitudes.html?_r=1
.

16.
Manuel Roig-Franzia, Mary Beth Sheridan, and Michael E. Ruane, “Haitians Struggle to Find the Dead and Keep Survivors Alive after Earthquake,”
Washington Post,
January 15, 2010,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/14/AR2010011401013.html
.

17.
Maura R. O'Connor, “Two Years Later, Haitian Earthquake Death Toll in Dispute,”
Columbia Journalism Review,
January 12, 2012,
http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/one_year_later_haitian_earthqu.php?page=all
.

18.
Hans Jaap Melissen, “Haiti Quake Death Toll Well under 100,000,” Radio Netherlands Worldwide, February 23, 2010,
http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/haiti-quake-death-toll-well-under-100,000
.

19.
Global Agriculture and Food Security Program, “Haiti Earthquake PDNA: Assessment of Damage, Losses, General and Sectoral Needs,” World Bank, Washington, DC, March 24, 2010.

20.
World Health Organization, Division of Mental Health,
Psychological Consequences of Disasters: Prevention and Management
(Geneva: World Health Organization, 1992).

21.
Timothy T. Schwartz, Yves-François Pierre, and Eric Calpas for LTL Strategies,
Building Assessments and Rubble Removal in Quake-Affected Neighborhoods in Haiti
(Washington, DC: USAID, 2011).

22.
Claude de Ville de Goyet, Juan Pablo Sarmiento, and François Grünewald,
Health Response to the Earthquake in Haiti January 2010: Lessons to Be Learned for the Next Massive Sudden-Onset Disaster
(Washington, DC: Pan American Health Organization, 2011).

23.
Financial Tracking Service, “Haiti in 2013—Related Emergencies. List of Outstanding Pledges and Funding In 2013,” United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 2013.

24.
Elizabeth Ferris, “Earthquakes and Floods: Comparing Haiti and Pakistan,” Brookings Institute, August 26, 2010,
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2010/8/26-earthquakes-floods-ferris/0826_earthquakes_floods_ferris.pdf
.

25.
For more on this, see the paper I co-authored: Elisabeth King and John C. Mutter, “Violent Conflicts and Natural Disasters: The Growing Case for Cross-Disciplinary Dialogue,”
Third World Quarterly
35, no. 7 (2014): 1239–55. It is rare for faults to exist in isolation. Typically, one main fault, such as the San Andreas, will be associated with numerous splays that originate from the main fault but cause dislocations far from it.

26.
Katz,
The Big Truck That Went By.
May 5, 2012.

27.
Vivian A. Bernal, and Paul Procee, “Four Years On: What China Got Right When Rebuilding after the Sichuan Earthquake,”
East Asia & Pacific on the Rise
(blog), World Bank, May 11, 2012,
http://blogs.worldbank.org/eastasiapacific/four-years-on-what-china-got-right-when-rebuilding-after-the-sichuan-earthquake
5/11/2012.

28.
Louisa Lim, “Five Years after a Quake, Chinese Cite Shoddy Reconstruction,”
All Things Considered,
NPR, May 13, 2013,
http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2013/05/14/183635289/Five-Years-After-A-Quake-Chinese-Cite-Shoddy-Reconstruction
.

29.
Sarah Chayes,
Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2015).