Good Morning Charles,
Can the same be said of Katrina? New Orleans, while a big American city was also a poor one especially in many of the wards. I contend too that poverty and as a result, less foresight in emergency planning leads to greater calamities and casualities in the wake of a natural disaster. Several Administrations' Core of Engineers also failed to construct adequate category 5 hurricane/flood dykes.
I am not saying then Mayor Ray Nagin, then Gov. Kathleen Blanco & the Bush Administration are w/o blame but it seems to me wealth and poverty are big mitigating factors contributing to the death toll and destruction of Katrina.

I think it's perhaps a bit too simple to say it's poverty alone, though that goes a long way in answering why Haiti got so devastated by the earthquake. It's all about preparedness. Poverty can certainly prevent seismic retrofitting and whatnot. But political will and awareness of the danger are also critical ingredients.

If a 7.0 hit New York City, the impact would be devastating. Despite its wealth, NYC is unprepared for much seismic activitity. Half the city is built on landfill, and many of its buildings are built from brick and stone. We aren't talking about the slums and ghettos--we're talking about some of its toniest neighborhoods (Brooklyn Heights, Tribeca, the Upper East Side....).

A self-styled Objectivist I know who likes to blame the poor for being poor immediately jumped on them the lack of good building codes in Hati for these deaths.

Building codes! From an anti-government, libertarian Objectivist? How convenient. I would have thought a free market with no regulation would have ensured the best quality construction, wouldn't it?

Kind of like Glenn Beck bragging about pulling himself up by his own bootstraps by educating himself a the library, which is "free", he says.

"you can't blame the Devil or the French."

What's the difference ? lol

But in all seriousness had mr Robertson actually blamed the french for the massive lost of lives down in Haiti instead of goin on about the pacts with the devil nonesense he would've actually said the truth. Because the poverty that brought about fragile building and living spaces constructions in Haiti, and the absence of proffesionals with the education and know how to establish good infrastructure throughout the country was the direct result of years of economic punishment and debt paying imposed on them by the criminal and morally bankupt french republic .

@3

Lack of preparedness is a symptom of poverty. When you live in a house made of sticks and are focused on just getting enough water every day, you don't exactly have much time to devote to earthquake preparedness and your political will in the society. Clue in.

Earthquakes don't kill people, buildings do.

The few structures in Haiti that were built to US or European code did just fine in the earthquake.
Here's Digicel's brand new office high-rise in Port au Prince with a collapsed non-code building in the foreground:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bostongring…
Likewise, the US embassy in Haiti doesn't have a scratch on it.

But what occasions poverty in Haiti?