On acts of God, and other disasters

I awoke yesterday to turn on CNN and find that overnight an earthquake of almost unimaginable power had struck some 200 miles from the Capital of Chile. By almost unimaginable, to put that oft overused term into perspective, the quake in Chile was 800 times stronger than the recent quake that devastated Haiti. Eight hundred times more powerful.
Yet in retrospect, the disaster in Chile was minimal. In Haiti, thousands upon thousands died. Many of those will never be found or buried except either in mass graves or in trashheaps of rubble on Port Au Prince's outskirts.
That Haiti is, and has long been, a kleptocracy is an unavoidable conclusion. It's government, both when it speaks, or when it acts, has zero credibility.
Chile, on the other hand, seems to have the kind of infrastructure and building codes that have helped minimize the disaster there. Four of the top ten earthquakes of all time occurred in Chile - number one was 9.5 on the Richter scale, in 1960 - so it can be inferred that Chileans are well prepared for quakes, even bad ones. Chileans are educated, vastly more so than the Haitians, and despite political turmoil that saw Pinochet and the Facha* generals there ruling for a number of years,
they seem to have a country that is handling this disaster with poise and strength.
Not a bad thing.
We might learn from them.

Facha - a Spanish slang term for fascists, that is members of the fascist party in Spain.