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Developments:
Although natural disasters are an inevitable fact of life, the havoc they wreak can be prevented. Had the Boxing Day earthquake hit a wealthy part of the world, the death toll would have been far lower and the destruction of survivors’ lives less widespread. In affluent Japan and Taiwan, for example, massive earthquakes in the 1990s killed a total of just 9,000 people (even the famous San Francisco quake of 1906 caused only 3,000 deaths). The recent tremors in poorer Iran and India, by contrast, killed over 80,000.
The reason the Asian earthquake has produced such carnage is because the countries it hit are mired in poverty. Prosperous countries are better able to cope with natural disasters. They have more efficient communications systems to provide early warnings. Their people live in more robust dwellings that are less likely to be flattened or washed away. Rescue and medical services are better equipped and more effective. Drainage and water supply systems are more resilient, thus reducing the need to rely on contaminated water and lessening the risk of disease. Stronger transport infrastructure, meanwhile, makes it easier to get help to victims, while governments with money in the coffers do not have to wait days or weeks for assistance to arrive from abroad.
Sending aid in response to disasters is essential and admirable, but such efforts provide short-term fixes rather than long-term solutions. Unless the deeper problems of poverty are addressed, events like those in the Indian Ocean will continue to cause enormous but preventable damage.
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