Maps of the Chile Earthquake - Map - NYTimes.com

Maps of the Chile Earthquake - Map - NYTimes.com

Interesting mapping of the earthquake, including what appears to be preliminary data on ground motion.

Death toll surges to more than 700 in Chile - The Globe and Mail

Death toll surges to more than 700 in Chile - The Globe and Mail

And now our Canadian friends propagate the same hoary disaster tropes:

Here's the subhead:

Looting flares as President announces fatalities - likely to rise - from quake, tsunami

And here's the troublesome language.

People desperate for food and water ransacked stores in some quake-stricken areas, raising speculation that the government would use martial law to crack down on looters.

And in a later paragraph

A lack of water, food and fuel sharpened the hardship for the hundreds of thousands of people left homeless.

It appears that at least one journalist and one editor have learned nothing from the discussions that followed the Haiti earthquake or, for that matter, Hurricane Katrina. My research suggests that governments sometimes do learn from experience--as the generally good performance of many buildings in Chile, compared with Haiti, suggests--but it appears that journalists learn little or nothing. This, I suspect, is because general assignment reporters just rely on some story frames from other inexpert journalism, relying on the amplification of themes by other cub reporters, rather than actually gathering information and placing it in anything like a context. Of course, the decontextualization of news is one of the biggest problems of journalism, as this story so aptly points out.

Large earthquake in Chile today

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/world/americas/28chile.html

More to follow. Hawaii under tsunami warning. I didn't realize that anything was happening until one facebook friend noted that Hawaii was under a tsunami warning, and then a friend noted that he was thinking of the people of Chile--as are we all.

TB

Disaster Awaits Cities in Earthquake Zones - NYTimes.com

Disaster Awaits Cities in Earthquake Zones - NYTimes.com: The general point is not surprising to those of us who study disasters, but the history of politics, growth, and construction practices is fascinating.

Moving away from tents in Haiti

The New York Times reports that aid groups in Haiti are moving away from tents and toward what the story calls "do-it-yourself housing with tarpaulins at first, followed by lumber." This story is interesting because it reflects so much of what has been learned about temporary (which often becomes semi-permanent) housing after major disasters, like the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. It's also broadly relevant to problems with post-disaster housing in industrialized nations, like the United States after Katrina.

Researchers Await Their Turn In Haiti : NPR

Researchers Await Their Turn In Haiti : NPR -- Thanks to Tricia Wachtendorf of the University of Delaware for the link to this story. It touches a bit on the very idea of disaster research, which is good to see.

The recovery phase is under way in Haiti

The interruption in posts is a function of the press of other work, and what seems to be little "new" news coming from Haiti--rather, the media coverage repeated much of what was known earlier, and, clearly, the half-life of this story is very short. In the U.S. media the matter was knocked off front pages by the Scott Brown's electoral victory in the special senate election in Massachusetts.

Meanwhile, I was quoted in a story in Pravda (not that Pravda--the one published in Slovakia) on the Haiti earthquake; it's in Slovak, but the writer also posted my comments, and those of Louise Comfort, at his blog. Louise's comments are worthy of attention--she is a well-known scholar in the field.