Don't know if this is a constructive post, but when Hurricane Katrina hit I was wondering which city in USA was most exposed to widespread disaster (my answer was Los Angeles from earthquake...just an opinion). This time, I am thinking what can be learned from Haiti earthquake. I think it is going to be the ground motions. In addition to the fatalities and other human suffering, I found some of the coverage last night right after the quake disturbing because of evidence for very high accelerations (like a person not being able to stand, or difficulty driving during quake). And, the place I thought of before Todd's post is the east Bay and the Hayward fault (California). The precarious (balanced) rocks in southern California prove that ground motion dies out over relatively short distances perpendicular to a strike-slip fault (with exceptions for sedimentary basins). I think this was the case for the 1999 Izmit Turkey quake (although 2000 died at distance in Istanbul along the projection of the fault). A report on the news today said little damage in Haiti 40 km from the fault.

Problems for the East Bay are proximity, and also probably bad ground near the Bay (parts of Oakland, although I'm not familiar with this beyind the 1989 collapse). So, what to do? Look at the ground motions in comparable quakes, do 3D ground motion modeling for Port au Prince and east Bay (may already have been done for latter), do engineering modeling for various types of bay area structures, and then build and retrofit to avoid collapses.
Chris