ABSTRACT
The Huaraz post-earthquake experience highlights at least two important features. The first is the unanticipated impact of a disaster boom economy on the city and region. The second feature stems from the Peruvian proclivity to concentrate wealth, power, and other values in one place toward which all else is oriented. Three basic “measures” are used to describe the severity of earthquakes: the loss of life, the loss of property, and the points registered on the Richter scale. The earthquake created many of the conditions known to be conducive to the formation of revitalization movements. An earthquake of 7.7 magnitude on the Richter scale strikes an area of twenty thousand square miles, encompassing all of the department of Ancash and adjacent areas. Over a million people, about 8 percent of the nation, are affected, with damages equivalent to 30 percent of national expenditures on may 31, 1970.
