The ABC evening news tonight had some disturbing news on the Haiti earthquake and response. I'd been discounting earlier very high fatality estimates but ABC after 6 days suggested 200,000. That may be 1 in 12 of people in the area if true. Also, they compared the response of U.S medical teams vs. Israeli: They said Israeli field hospital(s) were up and running several days ago (1 or 2 days after quake) while USA comparable was finally up and running today. As anyone who has been watching any news knows, there is still little aid for large areas and some have seen no help at all after 6 days.

The U.S. government should investigate whether they can do better; the next time could be the USA (think poor response to Katrina). Smaller California cities like Santa Barbara or Santa Cruz might be partly cut off after a quakes, particularly if the ground is saturated (landslides). Talking to a seismologist on Friday I was reminded how much better USA construction is, but the last 3 years of SCEC meetings make it look like for the taller buildings (10 stories and up, but maybe 5 story also?) the construction may not be better enough. The question is whether quakes like 1989 Loma Prieta and 1994 Northridge, with a few dozen fatalities, are going to be typical, or if it could be much worse. Note that Loma Prieta was beneath sparsely populated mountains; ground motions are liable to be far worse very close to the rupture.
Northridge was highly populated above the rupture, but the shaking was only 15 or 20 seconds there.
Chris