At exactly 4:53 p.m. Haiti was
suffering, a Tuesday evening of January 12, 2010 wasn’t so pleasant for
Haitians. This monster came barging in at full energy, this monster felt no
remorse for the Haitians hitting them at a magnitude of 7.0. leaving thousands
of people dead.
of Haiti and strike of the 2010 earthquake
Haiti is in the northeast Caribbean, Port-au-Prince being the
nation’s capital. Haiti has suffered other natural disasters, such as
hurricanes and tropical storms. Nothing
compares to the 2010 hurricane, which was the strongest the region had in more
than 200 years. Other than this earthquake being the strongest the region had,
Haiti is also the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, resulting in
political corruption and violence, malnutrition, disease and limited education.
Being the poorest country and getting hit by an earthquake with a 7.0 magnitude
is truly unfair.
does this all mean?
A 7.o magnitude in the Richter scale means
major earthquake, equals serious damage. In this case an earthquake happens due
to tectonic plates. Tectonic plates move around, slide past one another and
bump into each other. Tectonic plates tend to have edges that are called plate
boundaries, which are made of faults. The faults are rough edges that get suck
while the plate keeps on moving. Eventually the edges tend to unstick on one of
the fault and it causes an earthquake. Once
the faults unstick, the stored energy built into the moving particles causing
friction to release the energy. Which forms into seismic waves. Shaking the
earth while moving through it. Once it reaches the surface of earth, they shake
anything that’s on their way. The two types of seismic waves are S waves and P
waves. The P waves tend to travel faster than the S waves. If someone is closer
to the earthquake they’ll probably feel he P wave first and then, the S wave
would come right after. On the other hand, we have a subduction zone which is a
region of the Earth’s crust, where tectonic plates meet. There’s a divergent
boundary, which is basically a trench. There’s the convergent boundary, where
the plates collide and form mountains. Lastly, the transform boundary where the
plates tend to slide past each other, creating a fault line.