Haiti, Chile and Charleston

The 8.8 magnitude of Saturday's earthquake near Concepcion, Chile, was the world's highest in half a century. Yet the death toll evidently will be less than one-half of one percent of the 7.0 quake that hit Haiti seven weeks ago. While epicenter locations played a critical role in that vast difference, construction codes did, too.

As David Wald of the U.S. Geological Service's National Earthquake Information Center told The Wall Street Journal: "Earthquakes don't kill people, buildings kill people."

And when the authorities impose common-sense safeguards against earthquake damage, building regulations save people.

That clearly was the case in Chile, which has a history of major earthquakes, including the highest magnitude ever recorded, a 9.5, in 1960. In response to this continuing natural menace, Chile enforces strict quake construction codes.

Unfortunately, such regulations were lacking in Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. Those design and material shortcomings contributed greatly to this tragic statistic: At least 220,000 human beings reportedly perished due to the Jan. 12 earthquake.

Here in Charleston, we know what lies beneath us is a potentially dangerous fault line. So we know that we must do our best to prepare for the worst on the earthquake front. While our city made it through the 20th century without a big one, the devastating 1886 quake (estimated at 7.3 by the USGS) that killed at least 60 people remains a powerful cautionary lesson.

And a new study on some downtown schools with insufficient earthquake protections is rightly moving the Charleston County School District toward getting students out of them and into safer buildings.

Experts apparently agree that the world's recent flurry of large temblors, including a 7.0 near Japan's Ryukyu Islands Friday, is not cause for alarm that surges in quake frequency and/or intensity have begun. But with an average of 17 quakes of 7.0 or above each year since 1964, and with so many cities, including ours, lying near seismically active zones, buildings in them must be constructed -- and maintained -- with earthquakes in mind.

And as the Chile quake demonstrated anew, money spent on earthquake protection can pay priceless dividends in lives saved.