BOGOTA (AFP) - – The earthquake that devastated Haiti last week
has reminded many Latin Americans of the perilous ground they stand
on.
A map of the world's faultlines makes the danger clear: A red
line running from the frigid tip of South America, along the
continent's spine, to the warm waters of the Caribbean.
The cities on the faultline's path are among the biggest in the
region: Santiago, La Paz, Lima, Quito, Bogota and Caracas. All of
central America is threatened too.
The images of Haiti's destruction have brought back
all-too-clear memories of past disasters -- an earthquake that hit
Peru in 1970, killing 70,000 people; the 1976 quake that killed
25,000 people in Guatemala and Mexico City's 1985 tremor, which
killed 10,000 people.
If that were not enought to worry about South America holds the
unenviable record for the strongest earthquake ever measured, at
9.5 on the Richter scale. It hit in Valdivia in southern Chile on
May 22, 1960 and killed 3,000 people.
The area with the highest risk of a major quake runs from
southern Peru to northern Chile, according to Estella Minaya,
director of the Regional Seismology Center for South America.
Strains across that region, gathering over decades "have built
up more and more energy that will eventually explode," she told
AFP.
So what can be done? After Haiti's suffering, the question of
how to prepare for a major quake has gained fresh urgency.
In most of the countries in the risk zone, specialists and
officials said drills are regularly organized and numerous
observation stations have been set up.
But much remains to be done to protect the 586 million people
living in the area, where close to 75 percent of people live in
cities and a third live in poor, shoddily-constructed dwellings in
shanty towns or slums.
"In Chile, Colombia, Peru, there is legislation intended to
ensure that houses are build in accordance with
earthquake-resistant regulations, but in Bolivia in particular,
there are no controls in that regard," explains Minaya.
In Bogota, a city of seven million people, many in makeshift
homes built on the side of a mountain, some 80 percent of buildings
do not comply with earthquake rules, according to specialists cited
in the local media.
In Venezuela, "more than half of the population lives in humble
dwellings that could not withstand an earthquake and more than 60
percent of Venezuelans live in the zone most at risk for seismic
activity," added Carlos Genatios, an expert on earthquake
preparedness.
Across the continent, more and more specialists believe the most
effective approach is "microzoning," with regulations for each area
based on the risk of seismic activity there, rather than national
rules that are frequently ignored.
Colombia and Ecuador have already implemented this system, but a
there is a long way to go before "zero risk" is reached, experts
say.