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...fair, Haiti has had far less experience with earthquakes, and therefore earthquake preparedness, than Chile has. (Before Jan. 12, the last major quake to hit Port-au-Prince was in 1751.) There will, of course, be the apologists who insist it's unfair to compare a basket case like Haiti, the western hemisphere's poorest country, with a showcase like Chile, which has Latin America's highest per capita GDP and is set to become the first South American member of the exclusive, Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Chile can do things right, Haiti defenders argue...
Bellerive wouldn't go as far as to blame Haiti's élite for the more than 200,000 earthquake deaths. But those who doubt Haiti's ability to transform its government should note that Chile wasn't always an OECD candidate - it spent 17 years, from 1973 to 1990, under a brutal military dictatorship - and that Haitians are more than capable of emulating Chileans if given the chance...
Washington struggled to persuade the European members of NATO to pull their military weight even in the years when the alliance's purpose was to protect them from a Soviet invasion. Now that NATO is fighting a real war against assorted insurgents far from home in Afghanistan, getting the Europeans to pony up resources is proving to be an even tougher sell - and threatening NATO's very survival. (See pictures of the U.S. Army Reserve...
...possible tapping of survivors under the rubble of the massive 8.8-magnitude earthquake that hit the country on Feb. 27. The quake may be, as Chilean President Michelle Bachelet said on Sunday, "an emergency unparalleled" in the country's history. But the death toll - fewer than 1,000 so far, despite the quake's being one of the strongest ever recorded - is a tribute to Chile's remarkable preparation and response...
Still, says Zapata, who is heading up ECLAC's evaluation of the Haiti quake, "given the intensity of Chile's earthquake, it's amazing that there haven't been more damage and deaths than what we've seen so far." Chile has been credited with mandating strict building codes. But even the best earthquake-fitted infrastructure would have trouble withstanding magnitudes much higher than 8.0. The Chile quake, Zapata says, "is off the charts no matter how you look at it," which is why so many bridges and roads have been destroyed there. (See the top 10 news stories...