Fault Lines Near Haiti Primed for Devastation

The earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12 had multiple effects on the country, as far as its society, economy, and politics went, but also managed to destabilize all the fault lines around the region. This was the conclusion geophysicists analyzing the consequences of the tremor came to. They shared their data with representatives from the United Nations, and also with the Haitian President, Rene Garcia Preval. Such meetings usually take place after natural disasters, so that policymakers can take the most informed decisions about the future that awaits their countries, Nature News reports.

The 7.0-magnitude tremor also had the unwanted effect of causing between 30 and 50 kilometers of fault lines that were previously unrelated to the one behind the tremor, to slip. This means that further tension might have been added to a tremor-prone stretch or fault that passed even closer to the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince than the previous one. There are currently three teams of experts on the ground, mounting GPS receivers in police stations and churches, which are the most secure buildings for such a high-tech equipment. The groups are coordinated by Purdue University geophysicist Eric Calais.

The goal of the antennas is to provide measurements of how much the ground is moving, during an earthquake, as well as when no external factor is affecting it. “The UN is starting to put together a beginning of a plan to try to engage the Haitian government with support of non-governmental organizations and scientists to change things, to make the rebuild safer,” Calais said a couple of days ago, as he was heading out from his makeshift tent camp to meet the UN representatives and the Haitian authorities. Other studies are also conducted on Haiti at this point, including one by the NASA UAVSAR instrument, and some using seismometers and radar-equipped satellites.

“The main problem in Haiti is we don't know much about its history. In other places like North Anatolian Fault or Dead Sea Fault, we see clusters of earthquakes” that go back millennia, researcher Yann Klinger, who is based at the Institute of Geophysics in Paris, France, explains. “Regardless of what our calculations show, things have to change dramatically as far as earthquake safety” goes, Calais adds. One of the main reasons why the Haiti tremor was so devastating was the fact that it struck in an area covered by houses that didn't have the slightest degree of earthquake protection.