What a MEGA-putz...

From Yahoo/Reuters comes the latest bloviation from a Mr. Jan Egeland, the United Nations official who criticized the USA for being "stingy" in their aid to the Tsunami relief. bq. Disaster Looms for Megacities, UN Official Says Earthquakes, floods and other natural disasters could kill millions in the world's teeming megacities and time is running out to prevent such a catastrophe, the United Nations point man on emergency relief said on Tuesday. bq. Jan Egeland, the U.N. Director of Disaster Relief, said many of the world's megacities, including Tokyo, are extremely vulnerable to natural disasters and the poor were most at risk from a lack of investment and planning. bq. "Perhaps the most frightening prospect would be to have a truly megadisaster in a megacity," he said on the first day of a disaster prevention conference in the Japanese city of Kobe, where an earthquake killed nearly 6,500 people a decade ago. bq. "Then we could have not only a tsunami-style casualty rate as we have seen late last year, but we could see one hundred times that in a worst case." Hello??? Megacities are mega because they are prosperous. Prosperous cities suffer fewer deaths per capita during a catastrophe than poor cities. Look at Kobe ten years ago. Look at Bam, Iran. A nation of poor people with rich leaders, the mullahs. The mullah's severely limited any western aid from entering and about 40,000 people died. Bam's population is around 78,000 Kobe has a population of around 1,500,000 people and only suffered 6,500 fatalities. By my math that's about 20 times more people and 6 times fewer casualties overall. Looking at it another way: Kobe: 0.004 deaths per capita Bam: 0.5 deaths per capita Now tell me again who has the better survival rate? Mr. Egeland is falling into that same tired innumerate trap of looking at airplane crashes and decrying "how horrible they are" while failing to notice that per mile traveled, they are a lot safer than any other mode of transportation. You are more likely to die driving to the airport than taking your flight.