Relatives and firefighters search for people missing in Concepcion, Chile, on Sunday, Feb. 28, 2010, after an 8.8-magnitude earthquake that struck Chile early Saturday. (AP)

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Earthquake time again. This one — one of the very biggest in a century — striking Chile before dawn on Saturday, 8.8 on the Richter scale.

Two million Chileans reported forced from their homes. Seven hundred dead, and the number’s rising.

It’s a hard toll, though nothing like the 200,000 dead in Haiti. There is a tale of two countries here. One desperately poor. Another, Chile, seen headed for first-world status, with good building codes.

There is also a tale of two earthquakes. And a spate of quakes.

This hour, On Point: Chile’s big quake, and a seismologist’s take on what’s going on.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook 

Guests:

Joining us from Menlo Park, Calif., is Jian Lin, senior scientist in geology and geophysics at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He’s now at the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Center for Earthquake Research, in California, pouring over the data from Chile. He has studied the 1960 Chilean earthquake and the recent quake in Haiti.

Joining us from Santiago is Jorge Schaulson, former member of the Chilean Congress and Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1990-98 with the Party of Democracy. He is now a columnist and attorney in Santiago.

Also joining us from Santiago is Pascale Bonnefoy, Chile correspondent for the international news site Global Post. She lost a relative in the quake and has just returned home from the funeral.

Joining us from Miami is John Price, Managing Director for Business Intelligence at Kroll Associates, responsible for Latin America.

More links:

See the American Red Cross for information on the response to Chile’s earthquake.

Haitians living in an improvised tent city watch a U.S. Navy helicopter on Monday, Jan. 25, 2010. (AP)

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In 1915, U.S. troops went into Haiti at a time of crisis — and stayed for nineteen years.

What about this time? Masses of Haitians are still hungry and without homes. Much of the capital, the country, is leveled. Nearly 18,000 U.S. soldiers, sailors, and Marines are in and around Haiti now. Plus an army of U.S. and international aid groups.

But what should the U.S. commitment to Haiti be? How much? And for how long?

This hour, On Point: Haiti’s long road to recovery, and the U.S. commitment to the hemisphere’s poorest nation.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

From Port-au-Prince, Haiti, we’re joined by Damien Cave, Miami bureau chief for The New York Times.  His latest piece is “Lines and Tempers as Haitians Queue for Cash.”

Joining us from Arlington, Va., is James Dobbins, director of the RAND Corporation’s International Security and Defense Policy Center.  He served as special envoy to Haiti under President Bill Clinton and has held other senior White House and State Department positions under four presidents, including as envoy for the Balkans, Somalia, and Afghanistan.

And from Charlottesville, Va., we’re joined by Robert Fatton Jr., professor of government and public affairs at the University of Virginia.  He is author of several works on Haiti, including, “The Roots of Haitian Despotism,” and “Haiti’s Predatory Republic: The Unending Transition to Democracy.”

Pity the Burmese — and the Chinese earthquake victims — this week. Nature struck both, but one government couldn’t, wouldn’t, help its own people.

At home, California gives a green light to gay marriage. West Virginia goes for Clinton. John Edwards goes for Obama. John McCain says he didn’t mean one hundred years in Iraq. He meant five. And President Bush stands in Israel and calls other leaders foolish and delusional.

Polar bears officially in trouble. Gas prices surge again. This hour, On Point: Our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Trudy Rubin, foreign affairs columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Bill McKenzie, editorial columnist for The Dallas Morning News.

Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst and senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly.

The images out of China are heartbreaking. Whole villages essentially flattened by Monday’s powerful earthquake in mountainous Sichuan province. Schools down. Hospitals down. Grieving families standing in the rain.

And now, news of dams at risk of bursting. Maybe 20,000 dead. Maybe many more.

Beijing has responded with a hundred thousand soldiers and a national call for help, for shovels, for courage.

America learned from Katrina that natural disasters tear open big windows on a nation.

This hour, On Point: the earthquake in China, and what it reveals

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Peter Ford, Beijing Bureau Chief for the Christian Science Monitor, joining us from Chengdu, Sichuan Province.

James Areddy, Shanghai correspondent for The Wall Street Journal and a member of the team that won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting.

Sun Zhe, Professor at the Institute for International Studies and Director of the Center for US-China relations at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Orville Schell, Director of the Asia Society Center on US-China Relations in New York, he is the author of nine books on China, including “Virtual Tibet: Searching for Shangri-La from the Himalayas to Hollywood.”