ARAWAKROOTS NEWS
EARTHQUAKE IN HAITI
Vol.8, #1B
Jan. 23, 2010
"Page 2" of our coverage of the earthquake in Haiti:
DEBT FORGIVENESS:
The Inter-American Development Bank has announced that it would forgive Haiti's $480 million debt to its organisation. Additionally, the bank said it was prepared to grant Haiti $364 million that can be put to use immediately, and establish a fund to finance Haiti's reconstruction over the next 6 years.
HAITIAN NEEDS:
Trinidad & Tobago's PM Patrick Manning stated that the reconstruction of the institutions of Haiti is one of the most immediate needs. He told reporters in Port of Spain that the government in Port-au-Prince had "effectively collapsed".
CLINTON DEFENDS EFFORT:
Former US President Bill Clinton, who is UN's special envoy to Haiti, has been defending the relief effort here. He told reporters he didn't believe help had been slow to arrive. He also said American and UN troops were cooperating to get aid to those who needed it most.
ENOUGH FOOD:
The Spanish News Agency- EFE- quotes a Haitian government official as saying the country has received more food in international aid than it can store and distribute. Michel Chancy, the secretary of state for agriculture, was named to coordinate food aid in the wake of the Jan. 12 earthquake.
"In principle, he told EFE, "we have enough food. The problem is unloading and storing it."
UNITED EFFORT:
The Premier of the British Virgin Islands, Ralph O'Neal has called for residents to coordinate local aid effort aimed at Haiti. Their government wants to discourage groups and individuals from initiating multiple fund-raising efforts. "The government is appealing for a coordinated territorial approach", he said.
HAITI'S RECONSTRUCTION:
Four CARICOM leaders joined the presidents of Haiti and the Dominican Republic and officials from the EU and international agencies in Santo Domingo. In a communique, the coordinating committee stated that a team will be tasked with drawing up a draft strategy plan for the reconstruction of Haiti. It further stated: "Going beyond emergency aid, it will help strengthen the viability and social, economic and political stability of Haiti." Haitian President Rene Preval pledged to strengthen his country's institutions.
The communique also said that the government and people of Haiti are, and must continue to be, the main protagonists in the reconstruction of their country. "For thousands of Haitians, this tragedy has assumed an end. It is our responsibility to ensure that, for millions of citizens of this and other continents, it will likewise be a new beginning."
(Acknowledgements to BBC/CARIBBEAN NEWS)
SCIENTIFIC ANALYSIS OF THE QUAKE:
Since the ground shook Port-au-Prince and sent the densely populated city into chaos, scientists have been harnessing every possible tool to quickly assemble a detailed picture of a region in which scientific research has already been difficult to conduct. A geophysicist at Purdue University said, "The question we are trying to address right now is if there could be other faults nearby or perhaps other portions of the fault to the east or west that could go." Purdue has been using GPS stations to monitor the area since 2003.
The shallow earthquake occurred along the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault system, one of several major faults defining the boundary between the Caribbean and North American tectonic plates that move past each other in an east-west direction near Haiti. A section of fault approximately 50k long moved during the quake. The largest amount the fault slipped was 4.5 meters.
Poor building construction and dense population have made what by seismic standards is a big but not massive earthquake, into a major disaster. Scientists are now acquiring all the imagery they can in order to examine possible landslide-dammed drainages that could create subsequent flash flood hazards, identify surface ruptures and look for the extent of ground failure.
Though the planet is littered with some 4,000 seismic stations that constantly detect waves produced as the Earth's crust moves and shifts, not one station is in Haiti. For measuring the big quake, that's not a problem. "Every sand grain on the planet dances to the music of those seismic waves", says Ross Stein of the USGS, who is part of a team working to quickly model the possible after affects of the quake. But, there are no local stations in the immediate vicinity of the epicenter from which to obtain data to help constrain very detailed characteristics.
Most aftershocks are smaller than the first rupture and they become less frequent with time. But the strength of aftershocks doesn't necessarily decrease with time. A small percentage of them can be larger than the main shock. And a large aftershock could still hit a hundred days later. For the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault system, the early data from other Caribbean seismic stations shows aftershocks defining a western limit to the portion of fault that slipped. When the rupture stops at those strong points, the change imparts large stresses that can make those areas more likely to experience quakes.
It wasn't until 2003 that the researchers were able to begin quantifying the movement along the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault. In 2008, the research team announced at a meeting of the Caribbean Geological Conference that the fault posed a major seismic hazard. The team had measured plate motion of 7mm a year, 1/5 of the motion of the San Andreas, which is a similar type of fault. The problem is the fault had been quiet for quite a long time. The last major earthquake on the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault was in 1770. By Jan. 12 of this year, a large amount of stress had built up along the fault.
The fault was behaving as most faults do, but the quake hit a place totally unprepared for it. And it hit just as scientists were able to quantify what's going on there. Unfortunately, the progress came too slow and the earthquake happened too early.
Acknowledgements to Science News (www.sciencenews.org)
THE CARIBBEAN'S EARTHQUAKE HISTORY:
The Caribbean region may be better known for hurricanes, but as any regular reader of ARAWAKROOTS NEWS knows, the area is always at risk for earthquakes. Our News Archives are laced with stories of earthquakes large and small in the region- from 3.5 temblors north of the Virgin Islands to the major 7.4 quake near Martinique.
The Seismic Research Unit of the University of the West Indies says hundreds of earthquakes occur each year, in and around the Eastern Caribbean. The first earthquake in the sub-region this year was recorded on Jan. 4 north of Paria Peninsula in northern Venezuela and was felt in Trinidad.
The 7.0 tremor in Haiti was the largest known to hit the island nation, according to the USGS. The quake occurred along a vertical fault line that runs from Montego Bay in Jamaica to the southern part of Hispaniola.
Below is a list of the major historical earthquakes in the Caribbean region:
June 7,1692- Port Royal, Jamaica- unknown magnitude, 2000 dead, much of the city slipped into the sea.
May 2,1787- Puerto Rico- magnitude 8.0, possibly the strongest to hit the region, widespread damage.
February 8,1843- Leeward Islands- magnitude 8.5, at least 5000 dead, largest earthquake in Eastern Caribbean, felt from St. Kitts to Dominica.
October 11,1918- Mona Passage, Puerto Rico- magnitude 7.5, 116 deaths, $4 million in property damage.
August 4,1946- Samana, Dominican Republic- magnitude 8.1, quake and resulting tsunami killed 1600.
November 29,2007- Martinique- magnitude 7.4, because of the earthquake's depth only one death, but much infrastructure damage.
January 12,2010- Port-au-Prince, Haiti- magnitude 7.0, number of confirmed dead- over 100,000 and rising, infrastructure devastation.
EDITORIAL:
We at ARAWAKROOTS NEWS felt that you, our readers, had been saturated with stories of the shock, sadness, triumphs and tribulations from your major News sources as well as the opposite viewpoints from such sources as DEMOCRACY NOW!, that we felt it was a moot point to tell basically the same story here. I thought it strange to hear and see NBC NEWS finally report about people in Haiti eating dirt cookies to survive, as if this was something new. ARAWAKROOTS NEWS reported this story back in April, 2008 (Archived News- Vol.6,#2), as well as the fact that the aid has been pouring in to Haiti for years, but because of corrupt government and port workers, so much has been left to rot or eaten by vermin. We have also reported on the more positive reports on the Haitian relief efforts over the years. Probably the happiest story we reported out of Haiti appears in our Vol.5,#2 edition.
Anyway, this is the reason for the leaning in reporting ARAWAKROOTS NEWS is doing: to study the science and history, culture and society, and mistakes of the past, to come up with the best, most expediant solution to help Haiti help itself back to its feet.
Arawak Promotions has joined in the relief aid campaign for Haiti. Click here:
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