What Caused Haiti's Quake? Can It Happen Here?
By: Stephanie Berzinski
Updated: January 14, 2010
Haiti is not a place known for violent earthquakes. In fact, it's been a few hundred years since the Caribbean last saw an earthquake of this magnitude. So why did it happen now? Geoscience experts call it a "strike slip". That's when two plates beneath the earth's surface meet and slide back and forth against each other. That causes stress along a fault line and that stress is the earthquake that hit Haiti. Folks on the island are still experiencing aftershocks, which may or may not be a sign of more danger.
"Whenever you have a fault break you have this part of the fault rupture and all that strain that was accumulating there moves further down the fault and if the strain accumulates there it overloads that part of the fault and it could trigger yet another earthquake," said Dr. Harold Gurrola, a Geoscience professor at Texas Tech. "But I would think it's probably okay, but you never know until the aftershocks end...if the fault is strong enough to hold that strain then it will be awhile before the next earthquake."
Experts also say the earthquake damage in Haiti is mostly due to poor construction standards.
