Haiti earthquake

This sort of thing never ends well.

There was a 6.5 off the Northern California coast over the weekend.

 

7.3 near a country well-stocked with shanty towns. Won't even come close to ending well, deskslave.

 

Kind of a surreal appeal from the Haitian ambassador to the U.S. on Wolf Blitzer's show: Help us because we helped you guys in the War of 1776. But it sounds pretty awful.

 

I'm setting the over/under at 4 on freestanding structures remaining.

 

And those get wiped out in the next hurricane.

 

Maybe someone with more long-term earthquake knowledge can answer this: Is it just me or has there been an unusual number of large earthquakes around the world in the last six months?

And none of them have hit Southern California or the Bay Area.

 

Haiti's national palace has reportedly been destroyed. This is going to be very bad.

 

Actually, the shantytowns will probably come out of this in the best shape, relatively speaking. They have nothing to begin with and can slap-dash their abodes back together in a few hours, although the disruption in water supply, food, etc. in the aftermath is another story.

It's the people in the built-substandard hospitals, office buildings, etc. who will suffer the greatest loss of life from the jolt itself. That toll will be fearsome.

 

And God help 'em if it starts raining. They have bad landslide problems even in the best of times.