Haiti Earthquake Flashcards
When was the earthquake?
12th January 2010
Where is Haiti?
In the Caribbean sharing an island with the Dominican Republic.
What tectonic plates were involved / what type of plates are they?
Caribbean and the North American.
Conservative plate boundary.
Haiti’s development facts (at the time) : poverty level, life expectancy and education attendance.
75% live on less than $2 per day.
Life expectancy is only 52 years.
Only 60% of the population attended school.
What previous event made Haiti more vulnerable to the earthquake?
A hurricane in 2008 destroyed 70,000 homes and severely damaged the economy.
What was the richter scale and number of aftershocks
7.0 on the richter scale and over the next 12 days there were at least 52 aftershocks.
Primary impacts - Killed/injured
Homeless/buildings damaged
General impacts
220,000 killed (inaccurate govt sources) and 300,000 injured.
Estimated 1 million homeless and 250,000 homes damaged.
Generally shaking would have caused building collapse and some landslides blocking infrastructure.
What was the total cost?
Around $8 billion.
Secondary impacts - 4
2 million without food and water.
Regular power cuts.
Large increases in crime rates.
Water contamination by UN peacekeepers who were helping relief effort caused a cholera outbreak by November 2010.
Immediate responses - 4
Due to the port being damaged, aid was slow to arrive.
The USA sent rescue teams and 10,000 troops.
Bottled water and purification tablets were provided.
£20 million was donated by The UK government.
Long term responses - 3
Although the response was slow, new homes were built to a higher standard.
Over one million people still lived in temporary shelters one year after the earthquake.
As one of the poorest countries on Earth, Haiti relied on overseas aid.
Why did so many die in this case study? - 4
Shallow earthquake so more violent shaking.
The earthquake struck the most densely populated area of the country.
The only airport was severely damaged so aid took up to 48 hours to arrive and be sorted.
Cholera outbreak was devastating and poor sanitation/low living standards only made it worse.
How does the Haiti earthquake compare to the Chile earthquake?
Significantly lower magnitude but around 400x more deaths (Haiti govt were accused of inflating the true number)
In Haiti the government responded less and relied more heavily on international aid for rebuilding.
