In the L’Aquila Earthquake, more than 308 people are dead and 1,5000 people injured. The earthquake also leads to 65,000 people homeless and leaving 28,000 students without the access to the University. This also has severe impact to the economic situation of the country, which causes 88,000 people unemployed, the total cost has reached over 16 billion US dollars due to the financial losses and reconstruction efforts.
The severity of the earthquake is mainly due to the lack of communication and sharing of the problem and lack of earthquake drills. Earthquake drills is only practiced once a year. What is more, the population is mainly dominated by the 20-29 age group and elderly, who are over 70 years old, which will increase the vulnerability of the city, since they have less experience and direct contact with the problem. Moreover, there is an excess of females in the region, especially in age groups 30-39 and 70-79. Statistics predicted that if the gender is balanced, then the deaths could have reduced to 169 instead of 308. The government also fails to accumulate wealth to invest in protection for earthquake, which causes more deaths in this disaster.
In the Haiti earthquake occurred in 2010, it has about 316,000 dead and 300,000 people injured. The earthquake has caused for about 1 million people homeless. After the quake, there are more than 500,000 survivors were sleeping rough and 500,000 in make shift camps. The economic situation of Haiti after the quake is still uncertain but expert has estimated that it will take a few generations to recover the loss from the earthquake.
The number of deaths can be resulted from the collapse of buildings. This is mainly due to poverty, about 2 million people live in squatters, without proper foundations. This means that the buildings were poorly constructed and with rural to urban migration, there was overcrowding exists over that region. When an earthquake occurred, the vital infrastructure was damaged which could have helped with the response (e.g. electricity supplies disrupted, the main road between Port-au-Prince & Jacmel was still blocked 10 days after the disaster, medical facilities were badly damaged etc), which further results more deaths and injuries later on.
In conclusion, comparing the L’Aquila and Haiti earthquake, more developed countries tend to do more preparation before the disaster. On the other hand, the less developed countries tend to do less preparation, mainly due to its economic situation, which lead to higher vulnerability and deaths when a disaster occurred.
