Risk register · entry
Q2 · The Coconut2010 Haiti Earthquake
Scientists forecast a 7.2 on the fault in 2008. Haiti had no building code. The quake came in 2010.
The rare, high-impact event that was always coming, and was always going to be called unforeseeable afterwards.
Why this room
The Coconut classification holds because the seismic hazard was identified, quantified and published before the event, while the exposure that converted it into mass casualty was left untouched. A 2008 hazard assessment presented to the 18th Caribbean Geological Conference concluded, from GPS-derived slip rates on the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault and the interval since the last major rupture, that the fault was capable of a Mw 7.2 event. The 12 January 2010 earthquake was Mw 7.0 at about 13 km depth on or near that fault. The building stock was governed by inherited French design codes that contained no earthquake provisions and were in practice unenforced, so a foreseeable and forecast hazard met a structurally unprepared city.
The record
- In 2008, Mann, Calais and colleagues presented a hazard assessment to the 18th Caribbean Geological Conference concluding the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault was capable of a Mw 7.2 earthquake, based on a GPS-derived slip rate of about 7 mm/yr and roughly 250 years of accumulated strain since the last major event (1751/1770).high
- The earthquake struck on 12 January 2010 with moment magnitude 7.0 at a relatively shallow depth of about 13 km, with an epicentre roughly 25 km from Port-au-Prince.certain
- Official Haitian government figures rose from 222,500-300,000 dead about three months after the event to a final official figure of 316,000 dead and missing.certain
- A stratified cluster survey (Doocy, Cherewick and Kirsch, Population Health Metrics, 2013) estimated 49,033-81,862 deaths, against the roughly 222,750 reported by the UN.certain
- Daniell, Khazai and Wenzel (NHESSD, 2013) concluded the official 316,000 figure is 'significantly overestimated' and put their median death toll at less than half that value (about 137,000).high
Sources
- Jackson School of Geosciences, University of Texas at Austin
- Doocy, Cherewick & Kirsch, 'Mortality following the Haitian earthquake of 2010: a stratified cluster survey', Population Health Metrics (2013)
- Daniell, Khazai & Wenzel, 'Uncovering the 2010 Haiti earthquake death toll', Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences Discussions (2013)
- Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI), Special Earthquake Report, May 2010
The book
This entry is one of 111 in the register. The full story, and what it cost the people who lived it, is in Risky Business by Claudia Zeisberger, David Munro and Joanna Reijgersberg-Siew.
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