Opinion

Haiti vulnerable to nature's wrath

January 16, 2010 Edition 1

SETH BORENSTEIN

WHEN it comes to natural disasters, the little island of Haiti seems to have a bull's-eye on it. That's because of a killer combination of geography, poverty, social problems, slipshod building standards and bad luck, experts say.

The list of catastrophes is mind-numbing. This week's devastating earthquake. Four tropical storms or hurricanes that killed about 800 people in 2008. Killer storms in 2005 and 2004. Floods in 2007, 2006, 2003 (twice) and 2002. And that's just the 21st century rundown.

"If you want to put the worst case scenario together in the western hemisphere (for disasters), it's Haiti," said Richard Olson, a professor at Florida International University who directs the Disaster Risk Reduction in the Americas project.

"There's a whole bunch of things working against Haiti. One is the hurricane track. The second is tectonics. Then you have the environmental degradation and the poverty," he said.

While the causes of individual disasters are natural, what makes Haiti a constant site of catastrophe more than anything is its heart-tugging social ills, disaster experts say. It starts with poverty, includes deforestation, unstable governments, poor building standards, low literacy rates and then comes back to poverty.

This week's quake came as Haiti was still trying to recover from 2008, when it was hit four times by tropical storms and hurricanes, said Kathleen Tierney, director of the University of Colorado's Natural Hazard Centre.

And while there is bad luck involved, Mark Merritt, president of the disaster consulting firm James Lee Witt Associates, says: "It's an economic issue. It's one of those things that feed on each other."

Add to that the high population density in the capital, many of them migrants from the countryside who live in shantytowns throughout Port-au-Prince.

"It doesn't get any worse," said Dennis Mileti, a seismic safety commissioner for California. "I fear this may go down in history as the largest disaster ever, or pretty close to it."

For this to be the deadliest quake on record, the death toll would have to top the 2004 Asian tsunami that killed more than 227 000 people and a 1976 earthquake in China that killed 255 000, according to the US Geological Survey.

A leading Haitian senator, Youri Latortue, said that as many as 500 000 could be dead.

Vulnerability to natural disasters was almost a direct function of poverty, said Debarati Guha Sapir, director of the World Health Organisation's Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters.

"Impacts are not natural, nor is there a divine hand or ill fate," Sapir said.

"People will also die now of lack of follow-up medical care."

University of South Carolina's Susan Cutter, who maps out social vulnerability to disaster, said Haiti's poverty made smaller disasters worse. A magnitude 7 earthquake was devastating wherever it hit, she said. But it was even worse in a place like Haiti.

One problem is the poor quality of buildings. People who made on average $2 (R15) a day could not afford to build something that could withstand earthquakes and hurricanes, Merritt said. - Sapa-AP