.A COMBINATION of geography, comparative wealth and disaster readiness is why Chile's massive earthquake won't come close to Haiti's calamitous toll, even though it was much stronger, experts said.
Saturday's 8.8-magnitude quake, the seventh most powerful on record, struck central Chile some 325km south of the capital Santiago and 115km north-northeast of the second largest city of Concepcion.
So far the death toll is over 700 and rising, although President Michelle Bachelet, in announcing the newest figures, warned the toll would climb with hundreds of people still missing.
Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, was struck January 12 with a 7.0-magnitude quake - hundreds of times weaker than the one in Chile - but the epicentre was just 24km from the overflowing capital Port-au-Prince.
The most recent estimates put the toll there at over 220,000 dead, with President Rene Preval warning the final figure could reach 300,000, making it the worst natural disaster in modern history.
Seismically speaking, comparisons between the tremors are irrelevant because the situations at their fault lines were so different, experts said.
But put in geographic context, the two earthquakes show how events of different strengths at varying distances from densely urban areas can have vastly different outcomes.
The epicentre of Chile's earthquake was 35km below the ocean floor, with the seabed absorbing a large portion of the shock - although it did trigger a tsunami that threatened the entire Pacific region.
At a depth of only 10km, it was the Haiti quake's shallowness that proved so catastrophic, according to experts.
This proximity to the surface amplified the vibrations and caused far more damage to densely-packed urban areas near the Haitian capital.
The epicentre of Chile's quake also was almost five times farther away from the second city of Concepcion than Haiti’s quake was from Port-au-Prince.
"The difference between the Chile quake and Haiti was not only that the epicentre of the Haiti quake was closer ... but also that Chile was better prepared than Haiti for a quake of this magnitude and intensity," University of Colorado geology expert Roger Bilham said.
Since May 1960's record 9.5-magnitude quake that left over 2000 dead, successive Chilean governments have ensured moves towards robust construction standards.
While Saturday's quake still constitutes a major disaster, Chile's widespread adoption and enforcement of modern, seismic-resistant building practices "has mitigated the potential for devastation," according to US risk modeling firm EQECAT.
Following Haiti's quake, engineering experts blamed lax building standards in the Caribbean nation for having exacerbated the disaster.
When the quake struck, apartment blocks and smaller homes simply crumbled to the ground, trapping thousands under rubble and burying thousands more alive.
Originally Published on the Herald Sun
