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    After the Earthquakes – The New York Times

    NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORKBy World No Comments7 Mins Read

    In June and July, mega-earthquakes hit Venezuela and Japan; in the past two weeks, major quakes have struck Colombia and Indonesia.

    It’s too early to know the aftermath of the Colombian and Indonesian quakes; both countries are still digging through the rubble, and the death tolls are not yet final. But when you compare Venezuela and Japan, there’s a very striking difference. In Venezuela, the official death toll is more than 6,000; in Japan, it’s under 40.

    Today I’m writing about why some countries fare so much better than others when it comes to natural disasters. It’s partly about money — but it’s not just about money.

    On June 24, two massive earthquakes shook Venezuela, about half a minute apart. Both registered a magnitude of 7-plus. They struck near major urban centers. And they began close to the surface of the earth, which meant the shaking was particularly powerful.

    Japan was hit by only one earthquake, at a magnitude of 6.8. But the quake shared a number of similarities with the ones in Venezuela. Its shallow depth also produced intense shaking; its epicenter was also near heavily populated areas.

    Yet at least 6,100 died in Venezuela — and most likely more than that. In Japan, the death toll stands at a few dozen.

    What accounts for the fact that in one place whole areas were leveled, and in another only a few hundred buildings were damaged or partly collapsed?

    Part of the answer is simply money; Japan is a much wealthier country than Venezuela and has spent an enormous amount on earthquake preparation. But as recent reporting from my colleagues in both Venezuela and Japan shows, the difference lies in the relationships people have with their governments.

    Hard-earned lessons

    Kumamoto, the area that was hit the hardest by the recent Japanese earthquake, is a case study in resilience.

    In the days after Japan’s disaster, three of my colleagues traveled throughout Kumamoto. They saw wooden homes that had collapsed and roads that were warped. A shopping mall gutted by a post-quake gas explosion stood in ruins.

    But what struck them most were all the signs of a region well prepared for the worst — earthquake-proof city centers, bridges and homes, and communities trained in search and rescue.

    Kumamoto, they said, had actively learned from a pair of terrible earthquakes that destroyed more than 8,000 buildings and caused more than 270 deaths a decade ago.

    Step 1 was improving the physical infrastructure. Since the 2016 disaster, local and prefectural governments in Kumamoto have subsidized homeowners for retrofitting their homes. The earthquake-proofing cost tens of billions of dollars. By 2024, roughly 90 percent of buildings in Kumamoto Prefecture met Japan’s strict national earthquake-resistance standards.

    Step 2 was drawing on what my colleagues call Japan’s “deeply ingrained culture of mutual aid” to improve emergency response.

    Across towns and villages, they met community leaders who had trained locals to act in the hours before rescuers arrived. Residents now undergo rigorous biennial disaster drills and are assigned emergency roles, such as staffing evacuation centers or sawing through rooftops to extract trapped victims.

    The well-organized response that resulted this summer stands in contrast with what happened in Venezuela, where civilians also tried to engage in their own disaster response, under very different circumstances.

    A dark parallel

    Like Japan, Venezuela has a long history of earthquakes. It was among the first countries to adopt a seismic building code, in 1939. That code was revised and improved in 1967, after a devastating earthquake in Caracas.

    For much of the 20th century, Venezuela was also a relatively rich country, owing to its oil.

    But, as my colleagues report, Chavismo, a system of authoritarian socialism, combined with international sanctions, changed that. To survive, the ruling Socialist Party “cut budgets, enabled corruption schemes, crushed dissent and prioritized loyalty over competence,” they write. What we saw this summer were the direct consequences of some of those choices.

    Corruption meant what little money was available was often siphoned off at the expense of, say, preparing for emergencies.

    Budget cuts meant that by the time the earthquakes struck, emergency crews were shadows of their former selves. There was hardly any functioning machinery to dig through fallen buildings and fewer operating planes to reach disaster zones, a problem made worse by the American attacks on airfields when the U.S. seized Venezuela’s president in January.

    And, crucially, years of repression meant that Venezuelans no longer trusted their government to help in a crisis. My colleagues describe tragic scenes of people flooding into La Guaira, the worst-hit area, to help — and, by doing so, inadvertently blocking the main highway into the region and hindering rescue efforts, in a sort of dark parallel to Japan’s citizen rescue squads. Injured people died in idled ambulances; emergency workers sat in traffic.

    Japan is not only a wealthier country than Venezuela. It’s also a democracy where there are more mechanisms for citizens to hold their officials accountable. Corruption levels are relatively low. Social trust is comparatively high. The causal relationships between all these things isn’t always straightforward; what is clear, though, is that in a disaster, they can all become important.

    The lessons here go beyond earthquakes. Climate change means more natural disasters are coming our way, regardless of where we live. That makes societal resilience increasingly critical. But not every government enables it.

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