# **Introduction**

Natural disasters have killed thousands of people in the space of a few minutes. Their after-effects can kill thousands more over subsequent weeks and years. They can have a huge cost in terms of damaged buildings and infrastructure. And yet, many of the deaths and much of the damage is preventable. This paper focuses on where the great majority of the human cost of disasters is concentrated – the developing world. It examines the reasons behind continued, wide-scale death and destruction from disasters, and what these reasons suggest about effective responses in the context of developing countries.

Earthquakes kill thousands every year. The 8.0 magnitude Sichuan Earthquake in 2008 killed over 70,000 people. The 6.8 earthquake in Algeria in 2003 killed 2,700, the 1999 Marmara earthquake in Turkey killed 17,000 (Escaleras, Anbarci and Register, 2007, Anbarci, Escaleras and Register, 2005). Earthquakes account for the majority of deaths from a range of natural disasters which amounts to about 60,000 people a year worldwide – around 90 percent of which occur in developing countries (OECD, 2008).

Most earthquake deaths are related to building collapse or damage. In the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, for example, hundreds of thousands of buildings – including numerous public buildings such as schools and hospitals – collapsed. Beyond the human toll, the cost of this physical destruction can be considerable. The Marmara earthquake was estimated to have had a direct economic impact of over $5 billion (World Bank, 2005).<sup>2</sup> It is worth noting that while the majority of the human toll of disasters is borne by developing countries, most property damage occurs in wealthy countries (Box 1). The high human toll in developing countries is because despite the fact that it is well known how to design buildings to survive an earthquake well enough to avoid collapse, buildings in poor countries are usually not constructed according to such designs (Box 2). Correct construction of large, reinforced concrete structures in particular takes skills, expertise, time and money. All too often the capacities or the incentives required to ensure robust construction has been missing.

Fragile construction, alongside higher-risk land use practices, account for much higher death rates in similar-sized earthquakes close to population centers in the developing as opposed to the developed world. The 1988 earthquake in Armenia had half the energy release of the 1989 earthquake in Lolma Prieta near San Francisco, California, and yet caused 25,000 deaths compared to 100 in San Francisco.<sup>3</sup> The 2003 Paso Robles quake in California had the same power as the Bam quake in Iran, the death toll was two in California and 41,000 in Bam. According to later engineering analysis, a major

> 2 To provide some indication of the human toll of an earthquake in a developing country setting as measured in economic terms, using a value of statistical life set at $250,000, the loss of life alone in the Marmara earthquake ‘cost’ $4.25 billion.  This estimate comes with all of the considerable caveats about putting a financial value on human life.

> 3 The nature of construction in the two countries –with a much greater use of wood in San Francisco—may also have played a considerable role.  Having said that, wooden buildings in the Kobe earthquake were some of the most likely to collapse (Ghosh, 1995)

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