The 2010 Haiti Earthquake

Just before 5 p.m. on January 12, 2010, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck about 25 kilometers west-southwest of Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti and home to some 2 to 3 million people. The shallow quake lasted less than a minute, but in a crowded city of poorly reinforced concrete, much of it built on steep slopes and soft ground, it brought down homes, schools, hospitals, the National Palace, the cathedral and the headquarters of the UN mission. About 1.5 million people were left homeless. The death toll remains one of the most disputed of any modern disaster, with official and independent estimates differing several times over. Haitians came to call the quake Goudougoudou, after the sound of the ground.

The epicenter lay near the town of Léogâne, at a depth of about 13 kilometers, beside the Enriquillo–Plantain Garden fault zone, which marks part of the boundary where the Caribbean Plate slides east past the North American Plate. Scientists later found that the main rupture occurred on a previously unmapped thrust fault, now called the Léogâne fault, rather than on the Enriquillo fault itself, which remains under strain. Léogâne, Jacmel, Petit-Goâve and Carrefour were heavily damaged along with the capital. Port-au-Prince's seaport and the airport control tower were damaged, slowing the arrival of aid. A small local tsunami struck parts of the coast, including the fishing village of Petit Paradis, where it killed at least three people. Shaking was also felt across the Dominican Republic.

The Haitian government first put the toll at about 230,000 and later raised it to 316,000. A household survey published in 2010 estimated about 160,000 deaths, and a 2011 report commissioned by USAID suggested 46,000 to 85,000, a draft the agency said contained inconsistencies. The true number is unknown, partly because many victims were buried in mass graves without being counted. Donors pledged billions of dollars for reconstruction, but rebuilding was slow and uneven, and many displaced families lived in camps for years. In October 2010 cholera appeared in Haiti for the first time in about a century, and investigations traced it to a UN peacekeeping base, a role the UN acknowledged in 2016. The epidemic killed nearly 10,000 people.

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• The Tectonic Plates
  The seven great slabs and dozens of smaller ones that make up Earth's moving shell Caribbean–North American plate boundary
• Port-au-Prince
  Haiti's capital, where armed gangs control most of the city and a UN-authorized force has begun operations devastated
• Dominican Republic
  Hispaniola's larger half, with the Caribbean's highest peak felt in
• Haiti
  The first Black republic, born of revolution located in
• The Caribbean
  A sea, an archipelago, and thirteen states that share a history located in
• Caribbean Sea
  The tropical sea of pirates, coral, and a thousand islands on the coast of