Earthquake impacts and responses

Question 1

What are social impacts of earthquakes?

Answer 1

• Buildings can collapse
• People killed and injured
• Can break power and gas lines, leaving people powerless
• Can destroy water pipes, leaving people without easy access to clean water, potentially leaving to disease

Question 2

What are economic impacts of an earthquake?

Answer 2

• Can destroy business premises
• Damage to industry may mean the country has to rely on imports for a short while
• Repairing can be very expensive

Question 3

What are environmental impacts of an earthquake?

Answer 3

• Leaks of chemical and nuclear power from power plants due to earthquakes or tsunamis
• Fires started by damaged gas and electricity lines
• ## Tsunamis can flood freshwater ecosystems, killing plants and sanitising water and soil

Question 4

What are some political impacts of earthquakes?

Answer 4

• Shortages of food, water and energy can cause conflict and political unrest
• Governments may have to borrow money to repair damage, putting the country into debt

Question 5

How can Seismic hazards be responded to?

Answer 5

• Build giant sea walls to prevent tsunamis from hitting land
• Warning systems

Question 6

What were some social impacts of the 2010 Haiti earthquake?

Answer 6

• 316,000 deaths
• 195,000 injuries
• 1,100,000 homeless
• 2,000,000 in need of food
• Haiti is already the poorest country in the western hemisphere, so this earthquake really wasn’t helpful for Haiti’s development

Question 7

What were some economic impacts of the 2010 Haiti earthquake?

Answer 7

• 50+ hospitals and 1300 schools damaged

- Prison destroyed and 4000 inmates escaped

Question 8

What were some short term responses to the 2010 Haiti earthquake

Answer 8

• $100 million given in aid from the USA and $330 by the EU
• 810,000 people placed in aid camps
• 4.3 million provided with food rations following the weeks of the earthquake
• Lack of aid and poor management in some places led to people trying to rescue each other from under the debris

Question 9

What were some long term responses to the 2010 Haiti earthquake?

Answer 9

• 98& of rubble on the roads hadn’t been clearing making it hard for emergency and aid vehicles to get through
• 1,000,000 people without houses after a year so still had to live aid camps
• Support for nearly 70% of population with no job through cash/food for work projects
• Water and sanitation eventually supplied for 1.7 million people