{"id":3624,"date":"2010-01-13T12:19:40","date_gmt":"2010-01-13T20:19:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=3624"},"modified":"2010-01-13T12:20:38","modified_gmt":"2010-01-13T20:20:38","slug":"differential-earthquake-mortality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/differential-earthquake-mortality\/","title":{"rendered":"Differential Earthquake Mortality"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From <a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/ap\/cb_haiti_earthquake\">the Yahoo News report<\/a> on the Haiti earthquake:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Even relatively wealthy neighborhoods were devastated.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That is an odd thing to say. It was a commonplace in the ancient world that earthquakes differentially afflicted the rich. Those who lived in fine stone houses or apartment blocks (ancient Rome had &#8217;em, complete with atriums and doormen, so I suppose other cities did too) were much more likely to be killed than the poor in their huts of mud or sticks.<\/p>\n<p>From the little I know of Haiti, I should guess that some similar calculus applies. Actuarially one would expect the death toll to be highest among those in shoddily-built concrete structures\u00a0\u2014 non-elite office buildings (the quake hit around 5 p.m.), hospitals, schools, second-quartile slums. Next worse afflicted would be people in well-constructed buildings, which I suppose means a few rich people and high government functionaries. (Though I wouldn&#8217;t rule out the possibility that there are <em>no<\/em> well-constructed buildings in Haiti.) Least afflicted would the the bottom-quartile shanty poor. Having a shanty come down on your head is surely an unnerving experience, but not likely fatal.<\/p>\n<p>If anyone with good civil-engineering knowledge want to chime in on this, I&#8217;d be interested to hear their opinions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the Yahoo News report on the Haiti earthquake: Even relatively wealthy neighborhoods were devastated. That is an odd thing to say. It was a commonplace in the ancient world that earthquakes differentially afflicted the rich. Those who lived in &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/differential-earthquake-mortality\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3624"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3624"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3627,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3624\/revisions\/3627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}