US

'Earthquakes don't kill people, buildings do'

By SETH BORENSTEIN ASSOCIATED PRESS
Updated: 2010-03-10 00:00

WASHINGTON — First the ground shook in Haiti, then Chile and now Turkey.

The earthquakes keep coming hard and fast this year, causing people to wonder if something sinister is happening underfoot.

It’s not.

While it may seem as if there are more earthquakes occurring, there really aren’t. The problem is what’s happening above ground, not underground, experts say.

More people are moving into mega-cities that happen to be built on fault lines, and they’re rapidly putting up substandard buildings that can’t withstand earthquakes, scientists say.

And around-the-clock news coverage and better seismic monitoring make it seem as if earthquakes are ever-present.

“I can definitely tell you that the world is not coming to an end,” said Bob Holdsworth, an expert in tectonics at Durham University in northern England, referring to the number of quakes.

A 7.0 magnitude quake last month killed more than 230,000 people in Haiti.

Less than two weeks ago, an 8.8 magnitude quake — the fifth strongest since 1900 — killed about 500 people in Chile. And on Monday, a strong pre-dawn 6.0 magnitude quake struck rural eastern Turkey, killing at least 51 people.

On average, there are 134 earthquakes a year that have a magnitude between a 6.0 and 6.9, according to the US Geological Survey. This year is off to a fast start with 40 so far — more than in most years for that time period.

But that’s because the 8.8-quake in Chile generated a large number of strong aftershocks, and so many occurring this early in the year skews the picture, said Paul Earle, a seismologist at the US Geological Survey.

Also, it’s not the number of quakes, but their devastating impacts that gain attention with the death tolls largely due to construction standards and crowding, Earle said.

“The standard mantra is earthquakes don’t kill people, buildings do,” he said.

There have been more deaths over the past decade from earthquakes, said University of Colorado geologist Roger Bilham, who just returned from Haiti.  In an opinion column last month in the journal Nature, Bilham called for better construction standards in the world’s mega-cities.

Last year his study of earthquake deaths, population, quake size and other factors produced disturbing results. And that was before Haiti, Chile and Turkey.

“We found four times as many deaths in the last 10 years than in the previous 10 years,” Bilham said on Monday. “That’s definitely up and scary.”

Other experts said they too have noticed a general increase in earthquake deaths.

The World Health Organization tallied 453,000 deaths from earthquakes from 2000 to 2009, up markedly from the previous two decades. In the 1970s, however, a massive quake in China killed about 440,000 people.