7.0 earthquake - Haiti - 12 January 2010

Earthquake struck at1653 (2153 GMT) with its

epicentre 16k S W of Port-au-Prince

Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic and Porto Rico make up the series of islands known as the Greater Antilles, whilst the arc of volcanic islands on the eastern side of the Caribbean are the Lesser Antilles. Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the island of Hispaniola.

This is the poorest country in the western hemisphere. 66% earn less than £1 a day. Many in Port-au-Prince are uneducated and work only in informal jobs. Haiti’s economic prospects have been further affected by an unstable political situation. President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was overthrown during rioting in 2004. The country has a new president, René Préval, but the government is still very unstable and UN Troops patrol the streets. The government is probably the most corrupt of any in the world and the Haitians blame the government for riots caused by the price of rice, beans and fruit rising by 50% from 2007-2008. Very little government money has been spent on improving the quality of buildings, hospitals and roads.

This natural disaster has hit a country with an extremely fragile infrastructure, where 60% of the buildings are shoddily built and unsafe, even in normal circumstances, and where provision of emergency services is very poor indeed. 300,000 people live in the Cité Soleil slum where there are no paved roads or sewers and little to no water or electricity supply.

In 2008 four hurricanes struck in quick succession causing huge devastation. Buildings not destroyed were made less safe by the flooding, which made them all the more vulnerable as the earthquake struck. Thousands fled Genaives, the city worst hit, and moved to Port-au-Prince, which has now been struck by the earthquake. This capital city houses a third of Haiti’s 9 million in extremely over crowded conditions, where large families (as many as 15!) live in cramped conditions.

Hurricanes and flooding are perennial concerns for the poorest country in the western hemisphere, which has time and again been dependent on foreign aid in emergencies.

• In 1963 hurricane Flora, the sixth deadliest Atlantic hurricane in history, devastated the island. The US weather bureau estimated the death toll at 5,000 and the cost of damage to property and crops at between £80m and £120m.

• The country was struck by two disasters in 2004. In May heavy rains caused flooding that killed more than 2,000 people. Four months later mudslides and flooding caused by hurricane Jeanne, the 12th deadliest Atlantic hurricane, killed more than 3,000 people, mostly in the town of Gonaives.

• Tragedy struck again in 2008 when four storms – tropical storm Fay, hurricane Gustav, hurricane Hanna and hurricane Ike – dumped heavy rains on the country. Around 1,000 people died and 800,000 were left homeless. The number of people affected by the storms was put at 800,000 – almost 10% of the population – with the damage estimated at £600m.

A city lies shattered and its people are struggling without the most basic medical help, as officials predict the death toll from Haiti’s cataclysmic earthquake may well top 100,000.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/haiti/2010/01/13/2010-01-13_haiti_earthquake_haitians_race_to_aide_survivors_.html#ixzz0caJftSLX

And now this

Short video clip from the BBC Wednesday 13 January ....http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8455629.stm

The first priority for the Red Cross is search and rescue and then providing first aid. Then it will evaluate the damage and needs of the people, and cater for the most vulnerable and the most affected by providing emergency health care, water and shelter. The latest reports suggest that over 3 million people may be homeless and without food and water.

Determination

Despondency

The cost of this disaster will almost certainly be in the billions

"It's biblical, the tragedy that continues to daunt Haiti," US Secretary of State, Hilary ClintonDisbelief

UK-based aid agency Save the Children says many children in Haiti will be "petrified and in danger". Spokesman Gareth Owen tells Reuters: "Many will have been orphaned or be badly injured themselves and in urgent need of medical help. Thousands more will have lost all contact with their families and friends and are now struggling to survive alone in the rubble."

"These are good people. They've gotten a raw

deal time and time again, and they keep

coming back"

Former US President and UN Special Envoy to

Haiti, Bill Clinton

Desperation

"A tragedy beyond imagination" - UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown

Destitution

Desperate earthquake survivors plead for helphttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/

8459444.stm

Search teams are in Port-au-Prince with dogs, but for the time being at least most are having to fend for themselves. Desolation

The infrastructural damage is immense with power lines down, roads blocked with fallen masonry and fires breaking out all over the city as gas pipes and electric cables fracture.

Destruction

Zilda Arns Neumann, a legendary Brazilian aid worker, holds a child in this February 10, 2004 photo. The 73-year-old paediatrician died during the earthquake that rocked Haiti.

Hedi Annabi, Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Haiti. Missing presumed dead after the UN headquarters in Port-au-Prince collapsed.

UN personnel check damage to the organisation's headquarters, where many hundreds have worked since 2004 when President Aristide went into exile. Several bodies have been recovered from the debris but 150 are reported missing.

Devotion

• Port-au-Prince is in “total chaos,” with clouds of dust from collapsed buildings

covering the city

• Houses slipped down hills, walls collapsed and landslides left roads blocked, which will impede any response by authorities. People are digging through rubble to find loved ones.

• A school with children in its rooms collapsed in Port-au-Prince. The aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres said that its 60-bed hospital in Port-au-Prince was seriously damaged. A hospital was destroyed in Petionville and parts of the presidential palace collapsed.

• Communications have been largely cut, but there have been reports of crowds sitting in the streets with nowhere to go, and people running, crying and screaming.

China indicated that eight of its peacekeepers are buried and feared dead, with another 10 unaccounted for. The Jordanian army has three of its peacekeepers dead and 21 wounded. The Brazilian army said four of its peacekeepers were killed and a large number were missing. A French official told AFP that about 200 people were missing in the collapsed Hotel Montana, which is popular with tourists.

Many poorly constructed homes have been simply swept away by

the magnitude of the quake

A view of the Canape-Vert area of Port-au-Prince shows hundreds of homes destroyed

Residents pass by collapsed buildings - only a cross remains standing

People search for survivors amongst the ruins of the children's hospital in Port-au-Prince

Two days after the disaster struck, people speak of still hearing voices crying from the rubble. RAMhaiti tweets “The streets are now Haiti's living room and bedroom with everything closed. Money, food, drinks, supplies, rotting bodies, frustration, impatience, despair will all become a problem...Jacmel has had much destruction, school kids caught in collapsing buildings...the devastation is so widespread that the folks who should be helping, are probably taking care of their own issues."BBC video clip from a hospital at 12.35 13 January http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8458554.stm

The Presidential Palace in Port-au-Prince seen before and after the earthquake

There have been dozens of aftershocks in the immediate area with one as high as 5.9 and another at 5.5.

With the buildings still standing being shaken by these aftershocks more masonry could easily fall.

The epicentre was just 16k to the S W of the densely populated capital city of Port-au-Prince, and with a focus only 8k beneath the surface and the high magnitude (7.0) seismic activity in a country that has not had a major earthquake for 200 years it is no wonder tens of thousands are reported dead or missing.

Showing location of the Gonave Microplate

Enriquillo Faulttremors not

accurate for 12 January 2010

• The earthquake occurred on a primarily strike-slip fault (transform margin), with the crust on each side of the fault moving horizontally relative to the other side. To understand why there is strike-slip faulting in this area, we need to look at a simplified map of the entire Caribbean

• The Caribbean is contained on its own separate little plate. It is surrounded on three sides by the much larger North and South American plates, both of which are moving approximately westwards with respect to the Caribbean plate at around 2-3 centimetres a year.

• On the eastern edge of the plate, the boundary runs perpendicular to the direction of relative plate motion, so there is compression and subduction (and subduction volcanism, exemplified by the likes of Montserrat). However, as the boundary curves around to form the northern boundary of the Caribbean plate, where the Haitian earthquake occurred, it starts to run parallel to the direction of relative plate motion, making strike-slip faulting along E-W trending faults the most likely expression of deformation in this region. This is exactly what the Haitian quake appears to record.

• Note also that deformation across the northern plate boundary appears to be distributed - some motion is accommodated on faults that are located a little bit away from the actual plate boundary, further inside the plate interior. The Haitian quake appears to have occurred on one of these faults: based on the position of its epicentre the rupture is extremely close to the Enriquillo Fault, which appears to be a major strike slip fault running across the southern end of Haiti. This is the fault most likely to have ruptured. http://maps.google.com/maps?q=18.541+-

72.4855(M5.0+-+HAITI+REGION+-+2010+January+13++00%3A43%3A27+UTC)&ll=18.541,-

72.4855&spn=2,2&f=d&t=h&hl=e

Google map

click here >

Caribbean Plate

North American

Plate

ConvergenceStrike-slip

= epicentre

The earthquake occurred on a strike-slip fault (transform margin), with the crust on each side of the fault moving horizontally relative to the other side.

On the eastern edge of the plate, the boundary runs perpendicular to the direction of relative plate motion, causing convergence and hence subduction, exemplified by the presence of volcanoes in the area, like Montserrat, shown here.

Montserrat

Enriquillo Fault

The trench (Porto Rico Trench) caused by the subduction on the north-east edge of the Caribbean plate is very clear in this google image

Centre right can be seen what remains of the cathedral and there are other buildings all around it that have been razed to the ground. Check out some before and after images from digitalglobe.com

http://www.digitalglobe.com/downloads/DG_Analysis_Haiti_Earthquake_13Jan2010.pdf