Turkey Earthquake

Forgive the morbidity of all of this. My point is that economic growth saves lives.

We discussed in class the morning's news of a large earthquake in Turkey. As of 8 pm, deaths are up to 4,300 from a quake that was a 7.8 on the Richter scale.†

I pointed out that this is a better performance than other, poorer, countries in similar situations.

On NPR on the way home, they pointed out that Turkey had suffered a 7.6 in 1999 that resulted in 17K deaths, and then I found a 7.8 in Turkey in 1939 that resulted in 32K.

† The Richter scale is logarithmic with base 10. So an increase in 1 point on the scale is 10 times stronger. To compare two quakes with decimals, raise 10 to the higher Richter value, and divide by 10 raised to the lower Richter value (use Excel or a calculator, unless you want to do the binomial expansion by hand). For example, today's 7.8 quake is about 60% more powerful than the 1999 quake which was a 7.6. That doesn't necessarily imply 60% more damage, but it does suggest they're not as comparable as they look.

N.B. Keeping in mind that valid comparisons require really close Richter values, there's a similar pattern that in other countries (like India, Iran, Italy, and Haiti) that the passage of time and  economic growth, lead to fewer casualties. Also note that countries with governments generally viewed by developed nations as suspect (China from 1950 to 1980, Iran since 1980) generally have higher casualties too.