Chile Quake vs Haiti Quake
The 8.8 Chile earthquake was almost 500 times more powerful than the Jan. 12 quake in Haiti. The Chile earthquake struck 22 miles below the surface while the Haiti earthquake struck only six miles below the surface. Its epicenter was farther from large urban centers than the Haiti quake was.
These factors and the magnitude of the aftershocks explain, in part, why the number of lives lost, rising to more than 200,000 in the Caribbean country, are much higher than the nearly 800 in the South American one.
Haiti’s development indicators are also much worse than Chile’s. Life expectancy in Haiti is 61 compared to 78 in Chile. According to the indices of infant mortality, 57 out of 1,000 children die in Haiti compared to eight in Chile. The Haitian gross national income (GNI) per capita was $660 while Chile’s per capita GNI was $9,400. Last year, Haiti ranked 149 out of 182 countries, whereas Chile ranked 44 in the United Nations’ Human Development Index.
