Costa Rica Earthquake

An earthquake with a magnitude of 7.6 shook the country of Costa Rica on September 5th 2012. Only two people were reported dead, which may surprise some people considering the magnitude of this quake. Now a 7.6 is by far not the deadliest earthquake to have ever happened, but when we compare this earthquake with the 7.0 magnitude quake that happened in Haiti in 2010 one thing sticks out to me. The death toll as mentioned for this earthquake was two so far. But in Haiti, the 7.0 magnitude quake killed 50-100,000 people. Why was the Haitian earthquake more devastating than the one in Costa Rica? Costa Rica mitigated the natural disaster quite substantially by having a strong infrastructure to stand up to the shaking earth. There is much to be said about the comparison between these two events. Compare to Haiti, Costa Rica is a more developed country, most notably in infrastructure. This lead to more damage in terms of financial loss in Costa Rica but less loss in terms of lives. In Haiti the opposite occurred, the most severe damage was in terms of loss of lives. This is the trend that we see when looking at most natural disasters compared between more developed countries (MDC's) and less developed countries (LCD's).

Article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/05/costa-rica-earthquake-2012_n_1857743.html

Picture: http://www.examiner.com/article/powerful-quake-reported-costa-rica-tsunami-warning-mexico-to-peru-to-hawaii