Who wrote that Chile has an earth tremor on the average of once every two days and a devastating earthquake every presidential term?

He points to an intriguing article in the New York Times of Feb. 24, titled "Disaster Awaits Cities In Earthquake Zones," that pointed out that millions of people now live in unplanned and jerry-built mega-cities--such as Istanbul, Turkey; Karachi, Pakistan; Katmandu, Nepal; and Lima, Peru--that are earthquake-prone and could easily become the sites of mass extermination. The instruments of this would be what Dr. Roger Bilham, a seismologist at the University of Colorado, calls "an unrecognized weapon of mass destruction: houses." Across the world, millions of people either live or work in structures that have been termed "rubble in waiting."

Hitchens:

"The article told the story of increasing efforts by Turkish and Chinese authorities to "proof" their cities against future disasters. Turkey and China, while by no means perfect examples of democracy and transparency, have become much more responsive to popular awareness and protest in the recent past. Chileans have long expected their government to be prepared for seismic events, while Haitians are so ground-down and immiserated by repression and corruption that a democratic demand for such protection would seem an almost ethereal prospect.

This general point was specified in a dramatic way by a sentence buried in the middle of the Times article. "In Tehran, Iran's capital, Dr. Bilham has calculated that one million people could die in a predicted quake similar in intensity to the one in Haiti." (Italics added.) Tehran is built in "a nest of surrounding geologic faults," and geologists there have long besought the government to consider moving the unprotected and crumbling capital, or at least some of its people, in anticipation of the inevitable disaster.

And so to his point that ...."it should become part of our humanitarianism and our public diplomacy to warn the Iranian people of the man-made reasons that the results of a natural calamity would be hideously multiplied in their case."