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The Haiti Earthquake

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Submitted By strelow1
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The earthquake that took place in Haiti on Tuesday, January 12, 2010 was a devastating and tragic natural disaster. It was located at 18.457°N latitude and 72.533°W longitude ("USGS- Science for a Changing World"). The depth of the earthquake was 13 kilometers, or 8.1 miles in distance into the ground ("USGS- Science for a Changing World"). This earthquake was not very deep, and fell under the category of a shallow earthquake, which can occur anywhere from 0-70 km from the surface of the earth. In UTC time, this earthquake occurred at 21:53:10, which is the equivalent of 4:53:10 PM local time in Haiti ("USGS- Science for a Changing World").
The main shock of the Haiti earthquake was a magnitude of 7.0 on the Richter scale, which means that a large amount of damage would be expected near the epicenter ("2010 Haiti Earthquake"). According to our notes, earthquakes with this magnitude only occur about 20 times per year. The strike-slip fault system located in the region Haiti is in contains two branches: the Septentrional-Oriente fault in the north and the Enriquillo-Plaintain Garden fault in the south. Both the location and orientation of the Enriquillo-Plaintain Garden fault suggest that the January 2010 quake was caused by its rupturing. The cause of this was that the fault had been locked for 250 years, gathering stress. The rupture was about 60 kilometers long ("2010 Haiti Earthquake").
According to Wikipedia, the earthquake occurred in the vicinity of the northern boundary where the Caribbean tectonic plate shifts eastwards by about 20 millimeters per year in relation to the North American plate. A 2007 earthquake hazard study by C. DeMets and M. Wiggins-Grandison noted that the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault zone could be at the end of its seismic cycle and concluded that a worst-case forecast would involve a 7.2 magnitude earthquake. The fault had recorded

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