Why did so many people die in the 2010 Haiti earthquake?

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On the 12th January 2010, a tragic 7.0 magnitude quake on the Richter scale struck near Port au Prince in Haiti. This devastating earthquake was caused by a conservative plate boundary which had not caused an earthquake for 200years. 3,500,000 people were affected by the quake, 220,000 were estimated to have died, and over 300,000 people were injured. Over 188,383 houses were badly damaged 105,000 were destroyed by the earthquake (293,383 in total) and 1.5m people became homeless. After the quake there were 19 million cubic metres of rubble and debris in Port au Prince which was enough to fill a line of shipping containers stretching end to end from London to Beirut (The capital of Lebanon). Furthermore, 4,000 schools were damaged or destroyed and 60% of Government and administrative buildings, 80% of schools in Port-au-Prince and 60% of schools in the South and West Departments were destroyed or damaged. The impact of this was one of the most devastating anyone had ever witnessed. However, why did San Francisco earthquake (Loma Prieta) in 1980 which was magnitude of 6.9 in the Richter scale only cause 69 deaths compared to the death toll of 220,000 in Haiti?

The area with the most damage, Port-au-Prince, was built on loose sedimentary rock, which amplifies the seismic waves and intensifies them. We can see how much extra damage the loose sediment does as houses that were built on hard rock that were closer to the fault line survived, but houses in Port-au-Prince that were built on loose sediment 15 miles away did not. The focus was only 13km deep so the quake did not lose much energy when it reached the surface.

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Before the earthquake Haiti was already overly populated. In 2008 up to a million people were made homeless after four hurricanes struck around the important town of Gonaives in as many weeks. Therefore, the hurricanes of 2008 forced hundreds of thousands more people to flood into the capital Port-au-Prince because of the need to find a job as the country was very poor so only in the capital was there a chance of finding employment. . On the other hand, there were 300,000 people in San Francisco when the earthquake took place compared to 3million in the over-populated and crowded ...

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An excellent review of the main physical and human factors affecting the impacts of the Haiti earthquake. Very good use of geographical terminology and statistics. Some useful named examples as evidence of points made. To further improve: give sources of data/photos/specific info AND also state the physical data of the USA earthquake too.