Qualla: 2010 Haiti Earthquake

2010 Haiti Earthquake: Introduction

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Marco Dormino, CC BY-SA 3.0 igo. At 4:53 in the afternoon on January 12, 2010, the earth beneath Port-au-Prince broke along a fault line that had been locked and silent for 250 years. The rupture lasted less than a minute. In that span, Haiti's capital city -- home to roughly three million people -- collapsed. The Presidential Palace buckled. The National Assembly crumbled. The Port-au-Prince Cathedral, a landmark since 1884, fell in on itself. Tens of thousands of homes, stacked on hillsides without foundations or steel reinforcement, pancaked into rubble. By the time the shaking stopped, the country's infrastructure, its government, and the lives of hundreds of thousands of its people had been shattered beyond recognition.

Read more: 2010 Haiti Earthquake on Qualla

Image: Marco Dormino | CC BY-SA 3.0 igo

2010 Haiti Earthquake: A Fault 250 Years in the Making

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Logan Abassi / The United Nations United Nations Development Programme, CC BY 2.0. The Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault runs along southern Haiti, part of the boundary where the Caribbean tectonic plate grinds eastward against the North American plate at roughly 20 millimeters per year. For two and a half centuries, this fault had not produced a major earthquak...

Read more: 2010 Haiti Earthquake on Qualla

Image: Logan Abassi / The United Nations United Nations Development Programme | CC BY 2.0

2010 Haiti Earthquake: A City Without Foundations

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit US Air Force from USA, Public domain. Haiti had no building codes. Engineers would later note that few structures in Port-au-Prince could have withstood any significant seismic event. Buildings rose wherever they could fit -- on slopes, on land their occupants did not own, with walls of unreinforced concrete and mini...

Read more: 2010 Haiti Earthquake on Qualla

Image: US Air Force from USA | Public domain

2010 Haiti Earthquake: The Weight of the Numbers

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gregory Grene, CC BY-SA 4.0. How many people died remains contested to this day. The Haitian government put the toll at 316,000. The Inter-American Development Bank estimated between 200,000 and 250,000, calling it "the most destructive event a country has ever experienced when measured in terms of the numbe...

Read more: 2010 Haiti Earthquake on Qualla

Image: Gregory Grene | CC BY-SA 4.0

2010 Haiti Earthquake: Rescue in the Ruins

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit 서울특별시 소방재난본부, CC BY-SA 4.0. In the immediate aftermath, survivors dug through rubble with their hands. The first international rescue team to arrive was Iceland's ICE-SAR, landing within 24 hours. The Dominican Republic, sharing the island of Hispaniola, was first to provide aid, opening its hospitals and a...

Read more: 2010 Haiti Earthquake on Qualla

Image: 서울특별시 소방재난본부 | CC BY-SA 4.0

2010 Haiti Earthquake: The Long Road That Remains

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit 서울특별시 소방재난본부(Seoul Metropolitan Fire & Disaster Headquarters), CC BY-SA 4.0. Presidents Obama, Clinton, and Bush coordinated American fundraising efforts. The European Union pledged 330 million euros. Brazil committed 375 million reais. Nations around the world opened their wallets. But rebuilding a country that had been impoverished long before the earth...

Read more: 2010 Haiti Earthquake on Qualla

Image: 서울특별시 소방재난본부(Seoul Metropolitan Fire & Disaster Headquarters) | CC BY-SA 4.0