Transcript Slide 1

Haitian Earthquake
Tectonic event / location: The Caribbean - between the Caribbean Sea and the North
Atlantic Ocean, west of the Dominican Republic.
Level of development (developing,
developed)
Associated hazards (e.g. landslides,
tsunami)
LDC – one of the 50 least developed
countries in the world.
GDP (per capita): $1,300
Lies in the middle of the hurricane belt and
subject to severe storms from June to
October; occasional flooding and
earthquakes; periodic droughts.
Key information and statistics (deaths,
magnitude, injured etc)
The tremor hit at 16:53 local time on Tuesday
12th January 2010.
Reached 7.0 on the Richter Scale.
Depth 13 Km.
2300’000 deaths, 300’000 injured and 1million
left homeless.
It is estimated that as many as 3 million
people had been affected by the quake.
Socio-economic profile (indicators that
might relate to their ability to manage the
hazard)
Population below poverty line: 80%
Population growth rate: 1.84% per year
Urban Population: 47% of total population
Population: 9,203,083
Age Structure: 0-14 years: 37.5% 15-64 years:
59.1% 65 years and over: 3.4%
Climate: Tropical; semiarid where mountains in
east cut off trade winds
Terrain: mostly rough and mountainous, pretty
dry
Diagram of the cause of the event (include place specific detail e.g. name of the plates)
Causes of Earthquake-plates and faults involved
The earthquake occurred in the surrounding area of the northern boundary where
the Caribbean tectonic plate shifts eastwards by about 20 millimetres per year in
relation to the North American plate. The strike-slip fault system in the region has
two branches in Haiti, the Septentrional-Oriente fault in the north and the
Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault in the south. Both the location and focal
mechanism suggest that the January 2010 quake was caused by a rupture of the
Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault, which had been locked for 250 years, building up
immense pressure. The rupture was roughly 65 kilometres long with mean slip of
1.8 metres.
Impact on the landscape?
A Local tsunami in the Petit Paradis area near Leogane was caused as an
aftermath of the earthquake. Tsunami waves were also reported at Jacmel, Les
Cayes, Petit Goave, Leogane, Luly and Anse a Galets. The tsunami had recorded
wave heights of 12 cm at Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and 2 cm at
Christiansted, US Virgin Islands.
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), state the biggest issue is the
building waste; some 40 percent to 50 percent of the buildings fell in Port-auPrince and nearby towns. Because of the thousands of buildings which suddenly
become debris, the people are now overwhelmed with the capacity of waste
management.
Resources like clean drinking water were already scarce in Haiti before the
earthquake and availability has now been compromised further. Contamination of
natural water sources is an effect likely to remain into the long term future.
Haiti’s small agricultural industry will be affected due to the displacement of
nutrient-rich topsoil.
This also relates to the issue of land availability in which people can live and build
new structures in the further future.
The social-economic impacts of the event.
In the nights following the earthquake, many people in Haiti slept in the streets,
on pavements, in their cars, or in makeshift shanty towns either because their
houses had been destroyed, or they feared standing structures would not
withstand aftershocks.
Structures are often raised wherever they can fit; some buildings were built on
slopes with insufficient foundations or steel works.
A representative of Catholic Relief Services has estimated that about two
million Haitians lived as squatters on land they did not own.
The country also suffered from shortages of fuel and potable water even before
the disaster.
By 14 January, a thousand bodies had been placed on the streets and
pavements. Government crews manned trucks to collect thousands more,
burying them in mass graves.
The country was sent into a mass panic, in whih completely shut down. It took
12 hours for emergencry responses to hit the scenes and even days after the
event people were still being pulled out from under debris and being searched
for by loved ones. All health centres which were either in make shift buildings
or buildings which still had the basic structure, were overwelmed with
casualties. With very few staff to help all of the people who desperately needed
it.
Many countries responded to the appeals for help and launched fund-raising
efforts, as well as sending search and rescue teams. The
neighbouring Dominican Republic was the first country to give aid to
Haiti, sending water, food and heavy-lifting machinery. The hospitals in
Dominican Republic were made available, and the airport opened to receive
aid that would be distributed to Haiti. The Dominican emergency team assisted
more than 2,000 injured people. The Dominican Red Cross coordinated early
medical relief in conjunction with the International Red Cross. The government
sent eight mobile medical units along with 36 doctors including orthopedic
specialists, traumatologists, anaesthetists, and surgeons. In addition, 39 trucks
carrying canned food were dispatched, along with 10 mobile kitchens and 110
cooks capable of producing 100,000 meals per day.
The long term Recovery:
After 6 months:
The number of people in relief camps of tents and tarps since the quake was
1.6 million, and almost no transitional housing had been built. Most of the
camps had no electricity, running water, or sewage disposal, and the tents
were beginning to fall apart. Crime in the camps was widespread, especially
against women and girls. Between 23 major charities, $1.1 billion had been
collected for Haiti for relief efforts, but only two percent of the money had
been released. According to a CBS report, $3.1 billion had been pledged for
humanitarian aid and was used to pay for field hospitals, plastic tarps,
bandages, and food, plus salaries, transportation and upkeep of relief
workers. The real priority of the government is to protect the population from
the next hurricane season, and most of our effort right now is going right
now in that direction.
After 9 months: As of September 2010, there were over one million
refugees living in tents and the humanitarian situation has been
characterized as still being in the emergency phase. Money raised in Britain
has gone towards the red cross in which after 6-9 months of working with
people trying to help the sick and injured, along with helping them set up
tents to live in from organizations such as Shelter box, is now concentrating
on the situation of Sanitation to help prevent the spread of disease on the
large make shift camp sites. Latrines have been set up around the camps
and are monitored by the people living on the camps to look after them and
keep them running safely. Other aid organizations such as Unicef and
Oxfam have been doing the same. The red cross are also providing people
to travel around the camps and through music and song get people to listen
to advice about sanitation and health care as well to lift spirits and keep
people entertained.
How human actions help or hinder
Before the event
Earthquake hazard study in 2007 by different geologist’s show that the EnriquilloPlantain Garden fault zone could have be at the end of its seismic cycle and an
article published in Haiti's Le Matin newspaper in September 2008 showed
comments by geologist Patrick Charles that there was a high risk of major
seismic activity in Port-au-Prince. Even though this was said no action was taken
by the Haitian government.
Intensive logging beginning in the 1950s reduced Haiti’s forest cover from 60
percent to less than 2 percent today. This lack of trees causes huge soil erosion
problems, threatening both food and clean water sources. If there is forest cover,
when heavy rain takes place it doesn’t erode the land and It doesn’t result in flash
floods. This lack of forest cover results in Haiti being badly effected by
hurricanes.
Due to a rapidly rising population millions of Haitians have been pushed out into
marginal areas like floodplains while the most fertile land areas are often used for
slums and hillsides and steep landscapes used for agriculture.
Construction standards were low in Haiti; the country had no building codes.
Engineers had stated after the earthquake that 'it was unlikely many buildings
would have stood through any kind of disaster let alone this one.’
Sources / References (e.g. textbooks, journals, documentary,
internet)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/americas/2010/haiti_eart
hquake/default.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Haiti_earthquake
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/
http://www.boulderweekly.com/article-1360-environmentalimpacts-of-the-haiti-earthquake.html
http://www.shelterbox.org/deployment_details.php?id=122
It is important to show that you can analyse your
case studies in relation to theory and models
relating to hazard response and management.
Here are two models that you could refer to in
your essays...