Ideas@TheCentre
A city’s disaster and a country’s wealth
The brutal earthquake in my hometown of Christchurch is a timely reminder of the raw strength of nature and the way it can tear the fabric of our otherwise gentle lives.
It is worthwhile to note the stark differences in outcomes with Haiti earthquake on 12 January.
The two earthquakes themselves were roughly comparable. The Christchurch quake was 7.1 on the Richter scale 10 km below the ground; the Haiti quake was 7.0 and 8.1 miles below ground. However, the quake hit Haiti at about 4:53pm; in Christchurch it was at 4:35am. Christchurch is in a rich First World country; Haiti is, to put it crudely, dirt poor.
In Haiti, an estimated 220,000 people died. In Christchurch, zero.
Although the quake certainly struck Christchurch at the best possible time (had it been during the day, there would probably have been hundreds if not thousands of deaths), it is collapsing buildings and unsanitary conditions that kill people. These factors are not time dependent.
Two wise provisions that New Zealand has made for earthquakes stood in good stead: strident quake-safe building regulations and the EQC insurance cover, which is a state-run natural disaster insurance scheme built into all home insurance premiums. Both these policies are very sensible in a nation termed ‘the shaky isles.’
However, underlying this is New Zealand’s wealth and prosperity. And despite the supposed atomisation of modern life, it also has a robust civil society. Because it is prosperous, it can afford decent buildings that can withstand such a quake. Because it has the right institutions, rules and policies around earthquake regulation, reconstruction and emergency disasters, it can respond quickly.
Thus, society, through government, has both the funds and the wherewithal to coordinate and pay for reconstruction.
Unfortunately, Haiti’s experience was quite the opposite. They had none of the wealth, institutions, civil society, or deal with such a natural disaster, and ultimately ended up with millions homeless.
As the aftershocks continue, and the full scale of the rebuild sinks in, we should be thankful that such a disaster as the Christchurch quake occurred in a place of plenty and the capacity to deal with it.
Luke Malpass is a Policy Analyst with the Centre’s New Zealand Policy Unit, www.cis.org.nz.
