How Will They Count the Dead in Haiti? - An Excerpt

How Will They Count the Dead in Haiti?The grim statistics of natural disasters.
By Juliet Lapidos - An Excerpt : Posted Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2010, at 10:08 AM ET

Thousands are presumed dead after an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 struck Haiti on Tuesday afternoon. In May 2008, Juliet Lapidos looked into reports of more than 100,000 deaths from a cyclone in Burma and an earthquake in China. In the "Explainer" column reprinted below, she described how these sorts of numbers are calculated.

CNN reported today that between 63,000 and 100,000 people have died as a result of the May 3 cyclone in Burma. According to the Washington Post, the death toll from Monday's earthquake in China has exceeded 12,000 and is expected to rise. Where do natural-disaster death estimates come from?

Eyewitnesses and guesswork. Government relief workers and agents from NGOs assess stricken neighborhoods for casualties. They literally count bodies, take down reports from district officials or locals who have lost family members, and make estimates based on damage to infrastructure. (If there are 20 people missing and they all worked in a building that collapsed due to a tremor, the relief workers might count those 20 people as dead.) The workers then report back either to a government agency in charge of emergency assistance or to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. An aggregate figure filters down to national media outlets.


U.N. estimates are often higher than the local government's. (Burma's state television, for example, currently reports that around 34,000 people have died, while the U.N. claims the actual toll is closer to 100,000.) That's because the U.N. tries to account for regions that have not yet been assessed on the ground by using satellite footage of the wreckage and prior demographic information. If they know that 15 percent of the population perished in one village, they assume the same percentage died in a similarly affected village. Even without such projections, U.N. numbers are often higher because they err on the side of overestimation to ensure an adequate relief response. Local governments, on the other hand, might underreport to save face or to prevent international organizations from assisting opposition groups.

On Sunday, Oxfam warned that the death toll in Burma could reach 1.5 million without massive humanitarian intervention. To arrive at that figure, Oxfam used the U.N.'s 100,000 estimate as a base. Then they used research from previous natural disasters and demographic analysis (children and the elderly are less likely to survive, etc.) to predict that 15 times that many people could die from typhoid, malaria, dengue, cholera, and other diseases.

Newspapers and wire services don't have the resources to verify mortality statistics independently, so you'll often see two or more numbers cited in the same article. A recent article on Burma in the Canadian Globe and Mail, for example, gives the Burmese government's official number of dead and missing; the United Nations' far higher, unofficial number; and Oxfam's 1.5 million "in danger of dying" estimate. In the first couple days after a disaster, death tolls as reported by the media are often low and then creep upward. (On May 6, news sources were reporting just 10,000 dead.) That's because the first numbers usually come from government agencies that 1) may be underreporting or 2) are pressured to make approximations before relief workers have gauged the scale of destruction. Body counts also rise as victims die from indirect causes.

Neither eyewitness reports nor the projections done by the U.N. are thought to be entirely accurate. In the aftermath of a disaster, it's difficult to prevent double- or triple-reporting of individual deaths or to independently verify estimates from district officials. Predictions about inaccessible villages based on similar surveyed areas aren't entirely reliable, either. After the tsunami, for example, relief workers assumed devastation in remote islands that turned out to be relatively unscathed because the locals had escaped to higher ground.
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The 2010 Haiti earthquake was a catastrophic magnitude 7.0 Mw earthquake centred approximately 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) from Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, which struck at 16:53:09 local time (21:53:09 UTC) on Tuesday, 12 January 2010.[6] The earthquake occurred at a depth of 10 kilometres (6.2 mi). The United States Geological Survey recorded a series of aftershocks, fourteen of them between magnitudes 5.0 and 5.9.[7] The International Red Cross has stated that as many as 3 million people have been affected by the quake,with as many as 100,000 deaths likely, according to the prime minister.

Most of Port-au-Prince's major landmarks were significantly damaged or destroyed in the earthquake, including the Presidential Palace, the National Assembly building, the Port-au-Prince Cathedral, and the main jail.Additionally, all hospitals were destroyed or so badly damaged that they have been abandoned.The United Nations reported that headquarters of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), located in the capital, collapsed and that a large number of UN personnel were unaccounted for.The Mission's Chief, Hédi Annabi, was confirmed dead on 13 January by President René Préval.

There is concern about the emergency services' ability to cope with a major disaster,[16] and the country is considered "economically vulnerable" by the Food and Agriculture Organization. ( from Wikipedia)

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Israel is due, and ill prepared, for a major earthquake
By Zafrir Rinat, Haaretz Correspondent


The magnitude of the earthquake that struck Port au Prince was 7.0 on the Richter scale, with an epicenter 15 kilometers from the city and at a depth of 10 kilometers. In 1770 a powerful earthquake occurred, destroying the city, but many years have passed and it has slipped from Haiti's national memory.

In Israel the last destructive earthquake, with a magnitude of 6.2 on the Richter scale, occurred in 1927. Its epicenter was the Dead Sea, and its effects were felt in Jerusalem, Nablus, Jericho, Ramle and Tiberias, resulting in 500 deaths and injuries to 700. An earthquake in 1837 killed 5,000 people. According to the Jewish historian Josephus Flavius, in 31 B.C.E., 30,000 people lost their lives in an earthquake.

On average, a destructive earthquake takes place in Israel once every 80 years, causing serious casualties and damage. The more time passes since the previous earthquake, the closer we are to the next. In other words, we are running out of time.

The news from Port au Prince suggests that the destruction is complete - of buildings and infrastructure. The earthquake occurred in the afternoon, at a time when schools and public buildings were empty.

The main concern in Israel is that an earthquake would strike during hours when public buildings are populated. Most schools and hospitals in Israel were constructed before new building codes - which take into account the effects of earthquakes - were enacted. Moreover, some 50,000 residential buildings in Israel do not meet the new codes and are expected to collapse in the event of an earthquake. Even though this fact is known by all decision makers, nothing has been done to strengthen buildings and prevent them turning into death traps.

Billions of shekels are invested in the defense budget, and this is seen as an obvious investment, but reinforcing hospitals or schools so they can withstand earthquakes and their aftermath receives no allotment. The plan for installing safety cages in classrooms may be a move in the right direction, but in practice their installation has not begun and the budget for this will most likely be taken from the funds allotted for reinforcing buildings.

It is important to note that public buildings will have to serve as places of refuge for many after a disaster. Also, even though there have been plans and government decisions, the program for reinforcing buildings, especially in towns situated in high-risk areas - along the Jordan Rift Valley and the Zevulun Valley - has not been promoted sufficiently.

It does not appear that in the coming decade the situation will change, even though the danger of a powerful earthquake is no less than that of a nuclear disaster - with the difference that we know that an earthquake occurs on average every 80 years.

As part of the preparations it is possible to install a national warning system. A proposal on this has been made to the relevant ministers and the Finance Ministry. Such a system will not replace the necessary strengthening of buildings, but can offer short-term warning to those in endangered buildings. The system would provide warnings 10-60 seconds before the shock waves reach the buildings, based on sensors placed along the Afro-Syrian Rift, and record the movement of tectonic plates, sending the information to a nerve center.

The distance of most of Israel's population from the rift enables most residents to have at least a 20-second warning time. Twenty additional seconds usually pass before the building begins to collapse. In practice, this provides a 40-second window. The estimated cost of the system is $20 million, with an additional $1 million per year for operation and maintenance. The system is already operational in Japan, Taiwan, Turkey, Romania, California, Italy and Mexico.