Your "perhaps they should" reasoning verges a bit into "no bread? let them eat cake" territory.<p>You can't make buildings safer by decree. It takes resources. Haiti is the poorest country in this hemisphere, by far. (The next poorest countries, Guyana or Nicaragua, are each twice as productive by per capita GDP.)<p>Even with an accurate idea of the chances (but not certainty) of such a major earthquake, the people and government could quite rationally have decided other more pressing needs deserved all of their meager expenditures.