Figure 1: Port-Au-Prince flattened by 7.0 earthquake. flattened by a devastating earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 causing major destruction. The epicentre was 13 km from the capital of Haiti, Port-Au-Prince. The initial estimates for this disaster, placed the death toll around 210,000.
Sadly, this estimate was horribly wrong with the death toll rising well above 300,000. There were many reasons for the death rising so high, but one of them was the fact the earthquake lasted 3 minutes making it one of the longest lasting earthquake
The exact coordinates of the earthquake were 18.46° N and 72.53 W placing it right underneath a small town in Haiti’s country district called Léogâne. The earthquake’s features are visually represented in Figure 2, with it placing the epicentre in the town of Léogâne.
Figure 2: Map showing patterns in the earthquake and the tectonic plates surrounding it.
Also as with all earthquakes there is a reduction in the intensity of shock waves which is directly related to the factors of time and distance, or even the transmission of energy 0through discontinuous materials with different absorption capabilities. This pattern is shown in Figure 2 by using colours. The strongest and closest section of the earthquake has a deep red colour meaning the shaking was …show more content…
The closest earthquake that could be found was the 2010 Chilean earthquake. This earthquake had a slightly higher magnitude, with the magnitude of 8.8. This earthquake went for the duration of three minutes, considering these factors you would think that the chile earthquake had our higher death toll at least caused more damage. Interestingly this was not the case, both earthquakes were of similar destruction and the Haiti earthquake had a death toll 600 times larger than the earthquake in