2010 Haiti Earthquake

Event Information

• Date: January 12, 2010
• Place: Haiti; Port-au-Prince, the nation's capital city, and its surrounding areas were hit particularly hard due to their proximity to the epicenter.
• Result: Estimates vary, but between 220,000 and 300,000 people were killed in the earthquake, and another 300,000 people were injured.

Overview

On January 12, 2010, at 4:53 p.m. local time, a massive earthquake struck the Caribbean island nation of Haiti and caused widespread destruction. The earthquake's epicenter was roughly 15 miles (24 kilometers) from the capital city of Port-au-Prince, a densely populated area. Although death toll estimates vary, the earthquake is believed to have killed between 220,000 and 300,000 people and injured another 300,000. At the time of the earthquake, Haiti did not have a national building code, so many structures on the island were poorly built. As a result, numerous buildings were destroyed by the earthquake. Hospitals, government buildings, schools, churches, and countless homes were either heavily damaged or destroyed entirely, and more than one million people were displaced.

With a magnitude of 7.0, the powerful earthquake was the strongest to hit the region in more than two hundred years. The magnitude of an earthquake measures the amount of energy released at the source, or epicenter, of the temblor. The earthquake occurred at a fault—a fracture in Earth's crust—along the boundary between the Caribbean and North American plates. The two plates are constantly sliding past each other, typically moving less than 1 inch (2.54 centimeters) per year. That movement did not cause the shaking, however. Instead, the quake resulted from a release of energy from the Enriquillo-Plaintain Garden fault system. The fault lines in that system moved past each other in an east-west direction, which caused the energy release in the form of an earthquake.

Although the Caribbean is not considered a hotbed for earthquakes, earthquakes do occur there. Still, the 2010 Haiti earthquake took scientists by surprise due to its high magnitude. An earthquake of similar strength had not struck the area in decades. The earthquake's impact was felt even more widely due to its occurrence at a very shallow depth of only 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) below Earth's surface. The ground also shook for a significant amount of time, with estimates showing that the earthquake lasted from 35 to 60 seconds. The earthquake was followed by dozens of strong aftershocks, many of which reached magnitudes between 4.5 and 5.9. At least fourteen reached a magnitude of 5.0 or greater.

Before the earthquake hit, Haiti was considered the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Eighty percent of its nine million residents lived in poverty. As a result, the nation was ill-equipped to recover and rebuild from the earthquake. A massive international relief operation was launched to help the nation, which occupies the western third of the island of Hispaniola. The United States took charge in leading recovery efforts, sending thousands of military troops and other aid organizations to assist with search-and-rescue efforts, cleanup, and the delivery of much-needed supplies. Between contributions from governments and individual donors, billions of dollars were donated to the relief efforts. According to the United Nations Office of the Special Envoy for Haiti, international agencies allocated more than $13 billion for use between 2010 and 2020 to help the struggling nation. In 2012, then US president Barack Obama launched a small-scale effort to allow low-skilled workers from Haiti to come to the United States for work through a visa program. A small number of Haitians entered the United States each year, with a few dozen receiving visas each year since the program began. In a move that drew widespread criticism, President Donald Trump's administration, citing high levels of fraud and abuse by Haitians with the visas, ended the program in January 2018.

Not long after the earthquake hit, Haitians had a new problem to worry about when a massive cholera outbreak rapidly spread throughout the country. Just months after the earthquake, the disease—which had not been seen in Haiti for more than a century—exploded along the nation's largest river, the Artibonite, and spread quickly throughout the nation from there. The disease killed thousands and infected more than 6 percent of the population in just over two years, putting an enormous strain on the nation's already-weakened health care system. Soldiers from Nepal, who were living in a United Nations peacekeeping camp, were accused of bringing the disease to Haiti and spreading it after dumping their waste into a tributary of the river. Ban Ki-moon, the former secretary general of the United Nations, apologized for his organization's role in the epidemic.

Impact

The impact of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti was devastating, widespread, and long-lasting. The earthquake's catastrophic path of destruction left the already poverty-stricken nation with a monumental recovery effort that continued as of early 2018. A 2017 report from the United Nations estimated that seven years after the earthquake, 2.5 million Haitians still needed aid. More than 3.3 million people faced food shortages because the earthquake damaged crops and irrigation canals in many areas, which devastated the nation's farming and agriculture industries. Millions of Haitians were displaced by the earthquake, which damaged more than 80 percent of rural housing and forced people to live in tent cities. As of September 2017, the country continued to face a housing crisis, with more than thirty-seven thousand people still displaced.

The worst cholera outbreak in recent history struck the nation less than a year after the earthquake, causing a further humanitarian crisis that required resources and funds to be diverted from earthquake recovery efforts. A string of devastating natural disasters hampered plans to rebuild, which added to the nation's ongoing famine and poverty crises. In 2012, just two years after the earthquake, Hurricane Sandy struck the island, causing major flooding, more deaths, and the further spread of disease. After that, Haiti suffered a three-year drought, which made food supplies even scarcer than they already were. Then, in October 2016, Hurricane Matthew struck the nation, leveling entire communities and killing at least a thousand people. The disaster once again resulted in the spread of diseases such as cholera.

Bibliography

Cook, Jesselyn. "7 Years after Haiti's Earthquake, Millions Still Need Aid." Huffington Post, 12 Jan. 2017, www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/haiti-earthquake-anniversary‗us‗5875108de4b02b5f858b3f9c. Accessed 27 Jan. 2018.

"Haiti Earthquake Fast Facts." CNN, 20 Dec. 2017, www.cnn.com/2013/12/12/world/haiti-earthquake-fast-facts/index.html. Accessed 27 Jan. 2018.

Knox, Richard. "5 Years after Haiti's Earthquake, Where Did the $13.5 Billion Go?" NPR, 12 Jan. 2015, www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/01/12/376138864/5-years-after-haiti-s-earthquake-why-aren-t-things-better. Accessed 27 Jan. 2018.

"Massive Earthquake Strikes Haiti." History, 2011, www.history.com/this-day-in-history/massive-earthquake-strikes-haiti. Accessed 27 Jan. 2018.

Torbati, Yeganeh. "Trump Administration Bars Haitians from U.S. Visas for Low-Skilled Work." Reuters, 17 Jan. 2018, www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-haiti/trump-administration-bars-haitians-from-u-s-visas-for-low-skilled-work-idUSKBN1F702O. Accessed 27 Jan. 2018.

"What Caused the Devastating Haiti Earthquake?" NBC News, 13 Jan. 2010, www.nbcnews.com/id/34842469/ns/technology‗and‗science-science/t/what-caused-devastating-haiti-earthquake/#.Wm9h4qinGUm. Accessed 27 Jan. 2018.