BACKGROUND: Haiti quake one of worst ever in region

Wed, 13 Jan 2010

Washington - The peaceful Caribbean is not exactly a cauldron of seismic activity. That's why geoscientists were surprised by the magnitude-7 earthquake that destroyed much of Haiti's capital city, Port-au- Prince, on Tuesday. It was the largest ever known to hit Haiti and among the largest ever in the region, the US Geological Survey said.

The nearest geographic rival was in 1946 when an 8.0 quake killed 100 people in Samana, Dominican Republic, the country that shares the island of Hispanola with Haiti, according to the USGS.

Haitian President Rene Preval estimated that thousands may have been killed in Tuesday's temblor. International rescue teams are racing to the impoverished country to help.

"Unfortunately, Haiti has a rather poor economy and not a wonderful building style for earthquake resistance, so we would expect that we would see quite severe and widespread damage from this earthquake, " Michael Blanpeid, associate coordinator for the USGS Earthquake Hazards Program said in a podcast.

In terms of death toll, only three other earthquakes since 1692 in the region would match such devastation: Jamaica in 1692, a quake of no specified magnitude killed 2,000; Leeward Islands in 1843, an 8.3- magnitude quake killed 5,000; and another in Jamaica in 1907, a 6.5- magnitude quake that killed 1,000.

The Haiti quake happened at a fault between the Caribbean and North American tectonic plates, along the smaller Enriquillo- Plaintain Garden fault system, Carrieann Bedwell, a geophysicist with the USGS, told LiveScience.com.

"The two sides of the fault moved past each other in an east-west direction, and that's what caused the energy release and the Haiti earthquakes," Bedwell said.

USGS scientists measured 40 aftershocks in Tuesday's quake.

Haiti is more likely to be buffeted by hurricanes, as it was in 2008, when four back-to-back hurricanes killed at least 793 people and left 800,000 homeless.

In 2004, hurricane Jeanne and other storms killed at least 4,000 people.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/303623,background-haiti-quake-one-of-worst-ever-in-region.html.