Haiti Quake Maybe Just a Prelude
- From: Raymond <Bluerhymer@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2010 01:54:45 -0800 (PST)
Haiti Quake Maybe Just a Prelude
By Julia Whitty
Wed Jan. 13, 2010 5:57 PM PST
The tragic intersection between poverty and nature that rent Haiti
yesterday may not be the end of its seismic troubles. Science Now
reports that yesterday's 7.0 temblor ruptured only a part of the same
segment that 240 years ago unleashed a 7.5 quake—20 times more
powerful than yesterday's.
Worse, the potential for even greater destruction exists. In 1751, a
magnitude 8.0—32 times yesterday's quake—struck farther along the same
fault system off the southern shore of the island of Hispaniola that
Haiti shares with the Dominican Republic. A couple of months after
that a magnitude 7.5 occurred nearby. Plus a separate active fault
crosses through the north coast of the island.
Scientists are concerned the long-sleeping Caribbean has now been
awakened.
Add to that the fact that Port-au-Prince is built on unstable
sediments not bedrock and that the city lacks any kind of building
code and you have a recipe for repeat disasters, and then some.
So can we at least try to include along with the "massive aid racing"
to Haiti some sober planning... maybe a "building code" to alleviate
the failed state in our own hemipshere? How about some genuine long-
term help to heal the bones of that country? Does Wyclef have to do it
all?
http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/01/haiti-quake-maybe-just-prelude
Att'n California
"God is watching you."
-- Pat Robertson
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