Earthquake brings new disaster to troubled Haiti
Updated on 13 January 2010
This isn't the first time Haiti has suffered a humanitarian crisis due to nature. The country was badly hit by floods two years ago. Tom Clarke looks at why Haiti is at risk from natural disasters.
Haiti may have a warm and fertile climate, but it also cursed by its geography.
The country lies at the mercy of two of nature's most destructive forces, earthquakes driven by the tectonic plates that lie beneath it and hurricanes whipped up by tropical air masses that spiral overhead. The mountainous terrain makes communication and recovery harder still.
Haiti sits on the Caribbean plate, a vast slab of the earth's crust that is slowly grinding past the North American plate, which moves at a rate of about two centimetres a year.
Before last night, a fault running right beneath Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince hasn't slipped for more than 200 years. At magnitude 7, it was a powerful quake. But its impact was made more severe because the epicentre was shallow, just 6 miles beneath the surface, and so close to Haiti's capital.
Hurricanes
Haiti has suffered before from natural disasters.
The 2008 hurricane season was cruel to Haiti. Hurricanes Fay, Gustav, Hannah and Ike passed by in succession, dumping rain on the country for days. More than 800 people were killed in landslides, which destroyed 23,000 homes. The subsequent floods ruined 70 per cent of the country's crops.
In 2004 Hurricane Jeanne passed just north of Haiti and with it 13 inches of rain fell on the countries steep mountains. 3000 were killed in the subsequent floods. Hurricane Flora killed 8000 Haitians in 1963 – the sixth deadliest hurricane ever.
But the parallel tragedy of Haiti's political and economic situation means the country has little resilience to the worst of nature.
Once colonial France's "pearl in the Antilles", it suffered centuries of conflict and decades of misrule by Papa and Baby Doc Duvalier.
Extreme poverty and a lack of infrastructure are likely to have made this natural disaster worse. Though a quake of magnitude 7 is severe, in a wealthier nation with strict building codes the number of dead would likely be fewer. Many of the dead will have been crushed or trapped beneath cheaply constructed concrete buildings.
This satellite photograph shows the border between Haiti and neighbouring Dominican Republic.
Notice how the forest on the Haitian side of the border has been cleared for cheap charcoal, meaning the resulting landslides are deadly and commonplace.
This earthquake will have triggered many more, and efforts to reach isolated areas could be very slow.
