News blog

Earthquake strikes Haiti

A magnitude-7.0 earthquake, followed by a magnitude-5.9 aftershock, has struck just 15 kilometers from the 3 million people in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. neic_rja6.jpg

A local tsunami watch has gone out covering Haiti, Cuba, the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic, but the greatest threat may be construction practices on the land. Building collapse historically claims the greatest number of lives in such a disaster, particularly in overpopulated areas with shoddy construction. An estimated map of ground shaking from the US Geological Survey is available here; a map of previously known seismic risk is here. A collection of USGS overview material, including historical quakes in the Caribbean, is here.

According to this blogger’s first rough map checking, the quake apparently struck along the Enriquillo fault. For a bit of regional context, this USGS site looks at earthquake risk near Puerto Rico, which experienced a number of quakes on the order of magnitude 7 in the past century.

The Caribbean does not have a dedicated tsunami warning system; alerts in the Caribbean are handled by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii, other than Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands which are handled by the West Coast/Alaska center.

Image: USGS

Comments

Comments are closed.