2010 Haiti earthquake

2010 Haiti earthquake, large-scale earthquake that occurred January 12, 2010, on the West Indian island of Hispaniola, comprising the countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Most severely affected was Haiti, occupying the western third of the island. An exact death toll proved elusive in the ensuing chaos. The Haitian government’s official count was more than 300,000, which would make the earthquake’s aftermath one of the worst natural disasters in recorded history, but other estimates were considerably smaller. Hundreds of thousands of survivors were displaced.

The earthquake

The earthquake hit at 4:53 pm some 15 miles (25 km) southwest of the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. The initial shock registered a magnitude of 7.0 and was soon followed by two aftershocks of magnitudes 5.9 and 5.5. More aftershocks occurred in the following days, including another one of magnitude 5.9 that struck on January 20 at Petit Goâve, a town some 35 miles (55 km) west of Port-au-Prince. Haiti had not been hit by an earthquake of such enormity since the 18th century, the closest in force being a 1984 shock of magnitude 6.9. A magnitude-8.0 earthquake had struck the Dominican Republic in 1946.

Geologists initially blamed the earthquake on the movement of the Caribbean tectonic plate eastward along the Enriquillo–Plantain Garden (EPG) strike-slip fault system. However, when no surface deformation was observed, the rupturing of the main strand of the fault system was ruled out as a cause. The EPG fault system makes up a transform boundary that separates the Gonâve microplate—the fragment of the North American Plate upon which Haiti is situated—from the Caribbean Plate.

The earthquake was generated by contractional deformation along the Léogâne fault, a small hidden thrust fault discovered underneath the city of Léogâne. The Léogâne fault, which cannot be observed at the surface, descends northward at an oblique angle away from the EPG fault system, and many geologists contend that the earthquake resulted from the slippage of rock upward across its plane of fracture.

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Occurring at a depth of 8.1 miles (13 km), the temblor was fairly shallow, which increased the degree of shaking at the Earth’s surface. The shocks were felt throughout Haiti and the Dominican Republic as well as in parts of nearby Cuba, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico. The densely populated region around Port-au-Prince, located on the Gulf of Gonâve, was among those most heavily affected. Farther south the city of Jacmel also sustained significant damage, and to the west the city of Léogâne, even closer to the epicentre than Port-au-Prince, was essentially leveled.

A country in ruins

The collapsed buildings defining the landscape of the disaster area came as a consequence of Haiti’s lack of building codes. Without adequate reinforcement, the buildings disintegrated under the force of the quake, killing or trapping their occupants. In Port-au-Prince the cathedral and the National Palace were both heavily damaged, as were the United Nations headquarters, national penitentiary, and parliament building. The city, already beset by a strained and inadequate infrastructure and still recovering from the two tropical storms and two hurricanes of August–September 2008, was ill-equipped to deal with such a disaster. Other affected areas of the country—faced with comparable weaknesses—were similarly unprepared.

In the aftermath of the quake, efforts by citizens and international aid organizations to provide medical assistance, food, and water to survivors were hampered by the failure of the electric power system (which already was unreliable), loss of communication lines, and roads blocked with debris. A week after the event, little aid had reached beyond Port-au-Prince; after another week, supplies were being distributed only sporadically to other urban areas. Operations to rescue those trapped under the wreckage—which had freed over 100 people—had mostly ceased two weeks into the crisis, as hope that anyone could have survived for that length of time without food or water began to fade. However, there were still occasional recoveries of people who had managed to survive such confinement for weeks by rationing the meagre supplies available to them.

A people in crisis

It was estimated that some three million people were affected by the quake—nearly one-third of the country’s total population. Of these, over one million were left homeless in the immediate aftermath. In the devastated urban areas, the displaced were forced to squat in ersatz cities composed of found materials and donated tents. Looting—restrained in the early days following the quake—became more prevalent in the absence of sufficient supplies and was exacerbated in the capital by the escape of several thousand prisoners from the damaged penitentiary. In the second week of the aftermath, many urbanites began streaming into outlying areas, either of their own volition or as a result of governmental relocation programs engineered to alleviate crowded and unsanitary conditions.

Because many hospitals had been rendered unusable, survivors were forced to wait days for treatment and, with morgues quickly reaching capacity, corpses were stacked in the streets. The onset of decay forced the interment of many bodies in mass graves, and recovery of those buried under the rubble was impeded by a shortage of heavy-lifting equipment, making death tolls difficult to determine. Figures released by Haitian government officials at the end of March placed the death toll at 222,570 people, though there was significant disagreement over the exact figure, and some estimated that nearly a hundred thousand more had perished. In January 2011, Haitian officials announced the revised figure of 316,000 deaths. The draft of a report commissioned by the U.S. government and made public in May 2011 drastically revised the estimate downward to no more than 85,000. Officials from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) later acknowledged inconsistencies in data acquisition. Given the difficulty of observing documentation procedures in the rush to dispose of the dead, it was considered unlikely that a definitive total would ever be established.

Further deaths occurred as serious injuries went untreated in the absence of medical staff and supplies. The orphans created by these mass mortalities—as well as those whose parents had died prior to the quake—were left vulnerable to abuse and human trafficking. Though adoptions of Haitian children by foreign nationals—particularly in the United States—were expedited, the process was slowed by the efforts of Haitian and foreign authorities to ensure that the children did not have living relatives, as orphanages had often temporarily accommodated the children of the destitute.

Because the infrastructure of the country’s computer network was largely unaffected, electronic media emerged as a useful mode for connecting those separated by the quake and for coordinating relief efforts. Survivors who were able to access the Internet—and friends and relatives abroad—took to social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook in search of information on those missing in the wake of the catastrophe. Feeds from these sites also assisted aid organizations in constructing maps of the areas affected and in determining where to channel resources. The many Haitians lacking Internet access were able to contribute updates via text messaging on mobile phones.

The general disorder created by the earthquake—combined with the destruction of the country’s electoral headquarters and the death of UN officials working in concert with the Haitian electoral council—prompted Haitian Pres. René Préval to defer legislative elections that had been scheduled for the end of February. Préval’s term in office was set to end the following year.

As the spring rainy season and summer hurricane season approached with reconstruction efforts having made little progress, residents of tent settlements were encouraged by aid agencies to construct more-substantial dwellings using tarpaulins and, later, donated lumber and sheet metal. Though some provisional housing was erected before the onset of inclement weather, many persons remained in tents and other shelters that provided scant protection from the elements. Compounding the problems in the increasingly disorganized encampments within Port-au-Prince was the return of many people who, months before, had initially retreated to the countryside only to find little opportunity for employment.

Two years later, though roughly half of the rubble littering Port-au-Prince had been cleared and some damaged residences had been made habitable, more than half a million people remained in tents, many of which had deteriorated significantly. That number dropped to about 360,000 by the third anniversary. The decrease was partly due to a Canadian-sponsored program that provided grants to some of the nearly 30,000 residents of the most-conspicuous camp—located near the collapsed presidential palace on the Champs de Mars—which allowed them to find rental housing or repair existing structures. Although that area was cleared by July 2012, countrywide some 500 camps still remained at the end of the year. By 2014 the number of camps had been more than halved, though some 100,000 people remained without permanent housing. While the number of camps continued to diminish, more than 62,000 people were still displaced in early 2016.

Many who left the camps merely relocated to outgrowths of the existing slums surrounding Port-au-Prince. Others crowded into undamaged homes owned by extended family members or friends or returned to damaged structures, more than 200,000 of which were either marked for demolition or required major repairs. Efforts to level the worst such buildings, some of which precariously gripped the rims of ravines, were hampered by irate residents who refused to leave. The capital remained without power for significant stretches during a given day because of stalled work on the electricity grid. In addition, less than one-third of the population was steadily employed. Conditions were further exacerbated by damage to crops and settlements by tropical weather events, notably Superstorm Sandy in October 2012.

In October 2010, cases of cholera began to surface around the Artibonite River. The river—the longest on the island and a major source of drinking water there—had been contaminated with fecal matter carrying a South Asian strain of cholera bacteria. Suspicion that Nepalese UN peacekeeping forces stationed near the river were the likely source of the outbreak was validated by the leak of a report by a French epidemiologist in December. The report cited the absence of cholera in Haiti during the previous decade and the emergence of a parallel outbreak of cholera in Kathmandu, the city from which the troops had departed Nepal. The epidemic reached the tent cities of Port-au-Prince in November 2010, and by 2016 it had sickened some 770,000 people and proved fatal to more than 9,200. A 2016 report by the organization Doctors Without Borders claimed that cases of cholera had likely been significantly underreported.

In November 2011 several organizations filed claims against the United Nations asking that it take responsibility for the outbreak, install new water and waste-management systems, and compensate those who fell ill or lost relatives to cholera. In December 2012 the UN, while not acknowledging that its troops had been vectors of the disease, announced that it would fund a program proposed by the governments of Haiti and the Dominican Republic to rid Hispaniola of cholera by instituting new sanitation and vaccination measures. Critics noted, however, that the proposed financial scheme for the project hinged largely on previously promised monies not yet in hand. The UN asserted in February 2013 that it would not receive compensation claims related to the outbreak, citing its convention on privileges and immunities. In October 2013 a U.S.-based group, the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, filed a lawsuit in New York City against the UN, seeking compensation on behalf of Haitians affected by the epidemic. The U.S. Department of Justice asserted that the UN was immune from prosecution in 2014. In an October 2015 letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, a group of UN human rights experts excoriated the body for using legal loopholes to avoid taking responsibility for the epidemic and thereby undermining its own credibility. The following year the UN finally admitted to playing a role in starting the epidemic, though it did not say that the organization had caused the outbreak. The announcement came after Ban received a report from a UN adviser who claimed that the epidemic “would not have broken out but for the actions of the United Nations.” In addition, the adviser urged the UN to provide compensation to the victims. However, there was no indication that the organization would drop its claim of legal immunity.

The election to choose Préval’s successor as president took place in November 2010 after a 10-month delay. Voter turnout was low, and allegations of electoral fraud were widespread. A runoff election was held on March 20, 2011, between the top two candidates: popular musician Michel Martelly and Mirlande Manigat, a legal scholar and the wife of a former president of Haiti. Election observers noted fewer instances of fraud in the runoff, and voter turnout was higher. On April 21 it was announced that Martelly had won the election with some two-thirds of the vote. The political instability created by the quake resulted in the postponement of municipal and senatorial elections scheduled for 2011 and 2012, respectively. Haiti’s parliament was dissolved in January 2015, having lost its mandate to govern. Parliamentary elections were held in August 2015, and a second round, alongside a presidential election, was held in October 2015. However, allegations of fraud led to demands for a presidential runoff. Originally slated for December 2015, the runoff was canceled. Following the establishment of the new parliament in January 2016, Martelly agreed to leave office in February, and an interim president was sworn in that month.