Coral Gables Watch

Reason for Rebuilding Haiti at Higher Cost Building Standards

This is a lesson in humility for all of the geologists that worked at explaining the source of the Haiti earthquake.

The news for future quakes is not good.  It is better that Haiti be sure to reconstruct to a higher building code, even at a higher cost.  This will save money in the long haul–the next time they have an earthquake.

The magnitude 7.0 earthquake that caused more than 200,000 casualties and devastated Haiti’s economy in January resulted not from the Enriquillo fault, as previously believed, but from slip on multiple faults — primarily a previously unknown, subsurface fault — according to a study published online this week in Nature Geoscience.

In addition, because the earthquake did not involve slip near Earth’s surface, the study suggests that it did not release all of the strain that has built up on faults in the area over the past two centuries, meaning that future surface-rupturing earthquakes in this region are likely.

via NASA Study of Haiti Quake Yields Surprising Results | International Space Shuttle Station NASA Missions Google Earth Science Technology Mars.