Heading off disasters The Extreme Events Institute takes a broad approach
to saving the world from what Mother Nature dishes out By Alexandra Pecharich
It’s a tale of two countries. In January of 2010 a magnitude 7.0 earthquake rocked Haiti. An estimated 230,000 people perished in the cataclysm, a tragedy of unfathomable proportion punctuated by individual stories of heartbreaking loss. Just six weeks later, a magnitude 8.8 earthquake hit Chile, a country located along a highly active offshore fault line. The official death toll was reported at 560, with an estimated one-third due to the tsunami that followed. Both earthquakes resulted in tremendous pain and suffering, but the losses in Haiti remain staggering. In addition to the deaths, more than 300,000 people were injured and 1.5 million left homeless. Some 4,000 schools were damaged or destroyed as were more than 60 percent of government and administrative buildings in the capital. Meanwhile in Chile, with a population 65 percent higher than Haiti’s, 370,000 homes were damaged, but affected municipal buildings and hospitals generally returned to service within days or weeks.
12 | FALL 2018
18036_EXT_ FIU Magazine Fall18_FINAL2.indd 12
7/27/18 4:53 PM
