Earthquakes Aren't Man-made, Poverty is

                     The tragedy behind the tragedy in Haiti

By Selwyn Duke

Natural disasters are bad. They’re far worse when they combine with unnatural disasters. We’re all calling the recent Haitian earthquake devastating, but it’s more correct to say that in Port-Au-Prince there is tremendous devastation. And there is a difference, as more “devastating” quakes have caused less devastation in other places.

Famed economist Walter Williams brings this to light in a recent column. He points out that while Haiti's 7.0 quake has a death toll of more than 200,000, northern California's 1989 Loma Prieta 7.1 quake and San Francisco’s 1906, 7.8 quake — which was about eight times the intensity of Haiti’s — claimed respectively, only 63 and 3,000 lives.

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Comments

[Janice]

Selwyn, I don't know if this is a problem that only happens to me but when I click on the links that say "Read the rest here", only a portion of the page loads and I can't finsh reading your articles. :( Just in case it's not only me, I thought you'd like to know.

[Sal]

Don't worry Janice. You're not missing much.