Haiti Earthquake

Where it occurred

The red shows where the disaster mainly occurred

Hazard Events This devastating occurrence happened in the Haitian capital of port-au- prince on Tuesday 12 th January 2010, at approximately 16:53 local time. This earthquake also affected other towns outside this area. 316,000 people died and more than a million people were made homeless. 3 million people were affected because of the catastrophic earthquake.

Main Causes of The Earthquake As Haiti is situated along the boundary between the Caribbean and the North American plates, the rocky slabs that cover the planet and fit in like a jigsaw. These two plates constantly kept moving past on another, about 0.8 inches a year in an east-west direction. Stress and energy builds up along the boundary and along its faults where parts of the crusts stick, eventually that stress/energy is released when it cant hold it any longer. The strong movement that causes the two sides of the fault to release a magnitude 7 earthquake. magnitude is a measurement of how much energy is released by an earthquake, intensity is “simply an estimate or a measure of how strongly that earthquake was felt” said by Don Blakeman(An earthquake analyst with the united states Geological Survey) The release of energy: “The two sides of the fault line moved past each other in an east-west direction and that’s what caused the energy to be released.”

Here is a diagram on how the plates moved…

What happened to the people? As five years went on more than 85,500 Haitians still live in displaced peoples camps. The children in these camps are particularly venerable as they are growing up with limited or no access across everyday basic services such as water, sanitation, healthcare and schools.

Why Haitians risk their lives living in Haiti. The Haitians have no choice but to survive in such a country where they a lack of help from other countries. The Haitians try to escape haiti by sea journey for better prospects. Every year thousands of Haitians risk their lives trying to make the perilous sea voyage from their country to one of its wealthier Caribbean neighbours in search for a better life.

How Haitians prepare for the next earthquake In general, an LEDC(poor country) like Haiti will not have the resources to either predict earthquakes (which is difficult at best) or prepare for the resulting damage. An MEDC(wealthy country) can perhaps predict some earthquakes, or at least predict the area where they are likely to occur, and can take actions like requiring earthquake-safe buildings, stockpiling emergency supplies, and having preparedness drills. Haiti can't afford any of those. At best, people will know to leave fragile buildings when an earthquake starts, and international relief agencies will come in with food, water and medical care.

Hazard management in a workplace Identify hazards: The first step in managing health and safety in your business is to identify the hazards in your business and assess the likelihood of them causing a serious injury or illness. What you must do identify the hazards in all work areas. Regularly review your accident and incident register to determine the hazards that cause harm. Involve your employees in identifying hazards. Reassess the work area when there are new hazards or processes. For example, when you introduce a new machine or work process.

How is Haiti Going to be Prepared for the next disaster? Haiti may be the 3 rd needy country in the world, other countries have given Haiti shelters (temporary) This could help the Haitians by preventing rubble and debris falling on to them (from buildings)

My Conclusion I would not live in Haiti because of the amount of disasters that occur. More than two hundred thousand people died in the 2010 earthquake. I think it is very dangerous living in such a country that gets earthquakes every once in a while (and those kind of earthquakes that are dangerous)

Damaged infrastructure Despite being built upon a major fault line, Haiti had no building codes and therefore no way to ensure buildings are safe from earthquakes. As a result, Haiti’s infrastructure was demolished. Nearly 300,000 homes were badly damaged or destroyed. The earthquake struck near the capital city of Port- au-Prince, destroying many of the most important government buildings, hospitals and roads.

Reconstruction Effort So far, aid organizations have rebuilt about 21,000 houses and made 100,000 temporary shelters. 50% of the rubble has been removed and 650 schools have been repaired. In addition, the American Red Cross has provided 369,000 people with clean water, 2.4 million with health and hygiene education and three million with cholera treatment and prevention.