The disparate impacts of earthquakes on developing versus industrialized nations

Earthquakes with the most fatalities seem to be located in developing nations. As a result, it appears that poor nations have a higher seismic risk than rich nations. A community's seismic risk assessment requires knowledge of its geophysical, economic, and social factors. Evaluation of these factors using analysis of variance techniques demonstrates that earthquake fatalities are primarily dependent on the economics of the nation in which the epicenter is located. Multiple regression analyses of the ANOVA results show that these factors are statistically significant at the 66% to 99% levels. FEMA's HAZUS modeling program was used to simulate how earthquakes that have devastated developing nations would affect the United States. In two case studies, the geophysical and social factors were held constant and the economic factors were allowed to vary. The first case study placed the magnitude 7.8 1990 Luzon, Philippines earthquake in Salinas, California. In this simulation, Salinas had an estimated 56 fatalities compared to Luzon's 1700. A second case study simulated the magnitude 7.6 1999 Izmit, Turkey earthquake in Los Angeles. The simulated Los Angeles earthquake experienced 15% of the fatalities of the actual earthquake.