Discuss the view that poverty is the real killer in earthquake disasters

Secondary hazards can prove just as fatal and include landslides and soil liquefaction. The result of liquefaction is that building foundations become unstable and slopes become vulnerable to mass movement. As people living in poverty cannot afford the materials to build homes with high quality foundations and many live in squatter settlements or slums they are particularly vulnerable. The location of buildings is often determined by the funds available when planning takes place. In LEDCs where there is civil strife governments are more open to corruption and allow building on areas of land that are unsuitable. Slums often develop on land that is unsuitable for building due to ground composition or an unsafe location such as at the base of steep slopes, putting people living in poverty in further danger. In rural areas in developing countries, poverty may contribute to the isolation of communities as roads and electronic communications are disrupted. Landslides can result from earth movement and in the Sichuan Mountains the quake triggered mass movement and slope failure. The town of Beichuan was partly buried by landslides. Landslides also blocked access roads, further slowing down an already struggling rescue effort. Whereas MEDCs often have all the equipment and technology necessary to move large boulders and search through rubble the images we see on TV of the poor scrabbling through collapsed buildings with their bare hands show us what those in LEDCs must resort to.

National poverty limits the amount of aid survivors and refugees have access to, and the existence of disaster planning. In terms of modifying the loss LEDCs are heavily reliant on international aid, making them more vulnerable as aid rarely arrives straight away and lack of clean water and medication means disease can spread easily in the aftermath, killing many. However even in Kobe only 7% of people were covered by earthquake insurance, which is extremely expensive in Japan. As those covered are unlikely to be the poorer members of the community who lost their homes, poverty is once again the real killer. Citizen groups in Kobe claim that there have been a further 2900 deaths from suicide or neglect as poverty at an individual level means that following the disaster people without food and shelter have few entitlements to fall back on. In contrast, the impact of Haiti Earthquake, Responses were slow to reach Haiti, because of the large aftershocks. Roads became blocked and ports and airports were damaged. Roads were blocked with road debris or the surfaces broken. The main road linking Port-au-Prince with Jacmel remained blocked ten days after the earthquake, hampering delivery of aid to Jacmel. Local people have had to use their bare hands to try and dig people out of the rubble.  International Aid such as Oxfam based in Haiti due to frequent natural disaster happened. Oxfam is providing support to 1.2 million people in Haiti through our earthquake response and cholera prevention programmes. This shows how LEDC are heavily reliant on international aid, in order to reinstate the area after a natural disaster happened.

Affluent nations put a lot of time and money into preparing their people and in Japan much is done to prepare for inevitable earthquakes. All schoolchildren are put through emergency earthquake and fire drills four times a year. People are informed about the danger associated and how to respond should they find themselves in an earthquake. The emergency services practice their response procedures and supplies of food, water, medicines and shelter are stored in recognised safe areas and earthquake kits can be bought in department stores or made up at home so that essential items are easily accessible when needed. Community preparedness depends very much on financial backing to make sure that everyone is aware and the issue stays in the spotlight through TV campaigns and other media. Poverty creates problems in educating people about the best ways to respond to disasters, the people of Sichuan were extremely vulnerable to earthquake hazards. Vulnerability concerns preparedness and the human response to the hazard. Before the earthquake the mountainous areas of Sichuan were characterised by poor healthcare facilities; poor preparation meant that many of these healthcare centres were destroyed leaving few facilities to care for the victims.

The view that poverty is the real killer when it comes to an earthquake disaster can be argued due to the lack of money to invest in preparedness, materials and education programmes in LEDCs but is also because, in a society facing daily struggles for survival of a much more mundane nature, earthquakes are often perceived as infrequent problems unlikely to affect the current population and what little money there is, is spent elsewhere.