vivian shaw

Disasters and Relief

The NYTimes’ coverage of Chile’ 8.8-magnitude earthquake makes mention of a disparity in damage between yesterday’s disaster and Haiti’s seismically less-powerful, but vastly more deadly, 7.0-magnitude quake.

The scenes of toppled buildings, overturned cars and bodies being hauled from rubble resembled those from Haiti a month and a half ago. But because of better building standards and because the epicenter was farther from populated areas, the scale of the damage from Chile’s significantly more powerful earthquake was nowhere near that suffered in Haiti, where more than 200,000 people are believed to have died.

Here are the numbers: Chile’s death toll is at 708, with an estimated 2 million displaced. Deaths in Haiti were reported at over 200,000, with over 1 million displaced.

While it is expected that Chile will not suffer a death count nearly as high as Haiti’s, 708 is not a small number of human lives lost from a natural disaster. Unfortunately, relief resources are both limited and strained. Both countries may very well suffer from a compromised quality of relief services as a result. The likelihood that the extent of Haiti’s damage could have been prevented by greater equity of resources between the Global North and South should serve as a major wakening call.

Below is an important quote from “NGOs, Complex Emergencies, and Humanitarian Action,” a chapter from Going Global: Transforming Relief and Development NGOs by Coralie Bryant and Marc Lindenberg.

Because emergencies occur sporadically, the operational NGOs have trouble maintaining the resources for readiness capacity in non-emergency periods. Public funding is disbursed by a few large organizations by the European Union and bilateral donors. These public donors provide most resources only during emergencies and largely for field operations. Private donors get involved only after an emergency is well under way. They show little interest in maintaining installed operational capacity. The results of these perverse funding dynamics add up to a slow NGO response due to lack of installed capacity and preparedness.