Haiti Catastrophe Should Have Never Happened; What About When the U.S. Is Hit?

March 2, 2010 (LPAC)—The 64-page report issued Feb. 23 by the five-member advance team sent to Haiti in late January by the U.S. Geological Survey and Earthquake Engineering Research Institute concludes:

"There were no seismographic stations in Haiti during the main earthquake or its largest aftershocks, so it impossible to estimate accurately the intensity of ground motions. Nonetheless, indirect evidence suggests that the earthquake did not produce ground motions sufficient to severely damage well-engineered structures."

In other words, anywhere from 215,000 to 300,000 people died in the Jan. 12 earthquake and its immediate aftermath, because of British imperial looting policy, alone.

And what will happen when the next earthquake hits in United States' already-collapsing infrastructure? The director of the U.S. Geological Survey, Marcia McNutt, is warning that "it's not a matter of if, only of when an event like this strikes the people of the United States.... Earthquakes are not uniformly distributed in time; they cluster," and appear to follow a 50-year cycle of activity, a new cycle of which is believed to have started with the magnitude-9.3 Indian Ocean event in 2004, McNutt reports to USA Today.

Although is far better prepared than abandoned Haiti, McNutt pointed to the danger of aging U.S. infrastructure of bridges and overpasses. "I look at the reports of collapsing bridges and highways in Chile and worry what would happen here."