Haiti's earthquake is better than Chile's

Chile recently had an 8.8 earthquake (story here). As of now, Google shows the death toll at 723, but since the linked story showed just 300+, that number is sure to rise.


Haiti's earthquake was only a 7.0, and according to Fox, Haiti's official death toll is at 230,000 (doesn't really say if that's just from the earthquake, or from all the aftershocks, lack of medicine, and pervasive poverty, and since Chile's earthquake is much more recent, the comparison may be unfair or skewed, but it's safe to say Chile's isn't going to hit half that high).


The Richter Scale shows that a 7.0-7.9 is a major earthquake that has serious damage over a hundred or so miles. These happen once or more per month. An 8.0-8.9 is a greater earthquake that makes serious damage over several hundred miles. An earthquake this big only happens about once a year. That might not seem impressive, but when you see how many happen per month, that's pretty rare (with concern to percentage). Haiti's earthquake was barely major, while Chile's was almost massive, yet Haiti's got extensive press coverage and Chile's has hardly been mentioned (I know I said it was pretty recent, but it only took a few minutes for Haiti to get plastered everywhere, and it's been a day or so since Chile's).


Now, I'm not trying to trivialize what happened to Haiti, because it's indisputably more devastating than Chile's. They were already in awful shape, then the earthquake made it worse. But that doesn't make what happened in Chile any less of a tragedy. The earthquake was bigger, they're still going through aftershocks (from what I saw, they were in the 5s), and the bigger the original, the nastier the aftershocks.


An earthquake sucks. Always. Just because one is bigger than the other or kills more than another doesn't make it any less terrible. A tragedy is a tragedy, no matter the size. So it really pisses me off that people made such a big deal about Haiti, but don't seem to give a rat's face about Chile. Yeah, the people in Haiti are poorer and worse off, but a rich person in an earthquake and a poor person in an earthquake suffer equally, so I don't see why that matters.