The 2010 Haiti earthquake was a catastrophicmagnitude 7.0 Mwearthquake, with an epicenter near the town of Léogâne, approximately 25 km (16 miles) west of Port-au-Prince, Haiti'sUTC) on Tuesday, 12 January 2010. By 24 January, at least 52 aftershocks capital. The earthquake occurred at 16:53 local time (21:53 measuring 4.5 or greater had been recorded. As of 12 February 2010, an estimated three million people were affected by the quake; the Haitian Government reports that between 217,000 and 230,000 people have died, an estimated 300,000 injured, and an estimated 1,000,000 homeless. The death toll is expected to rise. They also estimated that 250,000 residences and 30,000 commercial buildings had collapsed or were severely damaged.
Many countries responded to appeals for humanitarian aid, pledging funds and dispatching rescue and medical teams, engineers and support personnel. Communication systems, air, land, and sea transport facilities, hospitals, and electrical networks had been damaged by the earthquake, which hampered rescue and aid efforts; confusion over who was in charge, air traffic congestion, and problems with prioritisation of flights further complicated early relief work. Port-au-Prince's morgues were quickly overwhelmed with many tens of thousands of bodies having to be buried in mass graves. As rescues tailed off, supplies, medical care and sanitation became priorities. Delays in aid distribution led to angry appeals from aid workers and survivors, and some looting and sporadic violence being observed.
On 22 January the United Nations noted that the emergency phase of the relief operation was drawing to a close, and on the following day the Haitian government officially called off the search for survivors.
On January 12, around dinnertime, a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck Haiti, decimating the island nation and leaving hundreds of thousands presumed dead. A rescue effort is underway now, but as government officials and rescue agencies sort through the rubble, it is worth asking: Could this tragedy have been prevented?
One group of scientists thinks so. Back in 2008, Eric Calais and Paul Mann, geophysicists who study fault lines in the Caribbean, predicted that Haiti would soon face such a devastating quake. The researchers reported that the Enriquillo fault, the line that Haiti sits upon, could produce a 7.2-magnitude quake if strained enough. Using GPS measurements, the team said that the fault was inching along at 7 millimeters per year, a moderate crawl in the realm of fault lines. But since this highly strung fault line has stretched several millimeters per year for the last 250 years, it was time for it to snap.
"Unfortunately our number is fairly close to what happened yesterday. If you think of the fault as a rubber band, as being pulled 7 millimeters per year at a constant rate, it will eventually break," Calais says.
Mann equates the fault in Haiti with the San Andreas fault in California, as both have plates that slip and grind past one another in a horizontal direction.
The difference between the two, however, is that Haiti hasn't been quantitatively studied in the past. Calais says that because Haiti poses safety concerns and a difficult work environment with a poor road access system, it's been neglected by seismologists. Fortunately, he says, by measuring the speed of the Enriquillo fault line, his team has made substantial progress in Caribbean geophysics.
But his research didn't translate well enough to elicit safety precautions before the quake. Though Calais notes that earthquakes can't be prevented, he says there was enough advance warning for the Haitian government to make preparations, and, in fact, his team alerted the government four to five years beforehand.
"We've told the Haitian government that the Enriquillo fault is a major player," Calais says. "We've told them exactly where the fault is. We've told them how fast it was building up elastic energy, and we've told them that right now, if it was to go, it could produce a 7.2 in magnitude or larger event."
The government has worked with the team and listened to its foreboding reports, Calais says, but for the most part, Haiti has failed to implement emergency plans and restructure crucial buildings. Even with scarce resources, there were options, according to Calais. For example, "You can identify the few buildings that are critical, that have to stand up in the face of a large earthquake, like hospitals and schools, from which rescue operations can be organized. This hasn't been done," he says. "One of the first buildings that was reported to have collapsed was a hospital. That is unacceptable and could have been prevented."
Calais hopes that neighboring areas such as the Dominican Republic take note of the Haitian quake and learn the dangers fault lines exhibit. He plans to travel to Haiti next week to evaluate the fault zone and try to determine what happened during the quake.
0 homeless. The death toll is expected to rise. They also estimated that 250,000 residences and 30,000 commercial buildings had collapsed or were severely damaged. 
appeals from aid workers and survivors, and some looting and sporadic violence being observed.
st one another in a horizontal direction.
