The earthquake that hit Haiti in 2010 was a terrible disaster. Overall 220,000 people were estimated to have died and 350,000 more were estimated to have been injured. Peter Haas, a building activist, asserts, in his Ted Talk, that the earthquake is not to be blamed but rather the poorly constructed buildings. Haas dubbed it a "Disaster of Engineering" rather than a natural disaster.
In the TED Talk Haas goes in to detail on how these engineering failures are truly the reason for all the deaths and injuries. Using visuals he proceeds to show multiple examples of collapsed buildings just so the audience can understand just how bad it really was. He then compares the Haiti earthquake to a earthquake that hit Chile later that year. The earthquake in Haiti was rated a 7.0 on the Richter Scale (Scale used to measure the magnitude of earthquakes) whereas the magnitude of the earthquake that hit Chile was a 8.8. The number of lives lost during the earthquake disaster in Chile was less than 1,000. This comparison shows how the engineering of the buildings has a large impact on how natural disasters can effect a populated region.
The engineering of the buildings in Haiti were poorly done which caused many to collapse, including the royal palace which could be considered the equivalent of The White House. Construction workers in Haiti were not trained correctly and the companies that were in charge of creating these structures were only concerned with money rather than the safety of the final product. These types of things need to fixed and cannot occur again. The correct construction and engineering techniques must be used in order for tragedies, such as the one that occurred in Haiti, not to happen.
Sources:
TED. "Peter Haas: Haiti's disaster of engineering." Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 14 Oct. 2010. Web. 1 Nov. 2015.
By: Quinn Foster
What happened in Haiti was tragic, and I would have never thought that if the engineers in Haiti designed the buildings better there would be more lives saved. Do you think it has anything to do with Haiti's high poverty or just that the engineers aren't trained well? It is shocking to see that Chile had a higher in magnitude earthquake but lost only 1,000 of its people compared to 222,000 in Haiti.
ReplyDeleteI had no idea this happened because of poor engineering and it really saddens me that many of those deaths could have been avoided if the engineers had the proper training. In the TED talk Peter Haas said that the failures were just from poor training so I don't think it had anything to do with high poverty rates.
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