Haiti may be primed for another quake

[n2doc]

By Julie SteenhuysenPosted 2010/10/24 at 1:04 pm EDT

CHICAGO, Oct. 24, 2010 (Reuters) — The earthquake that devastated Haiti's capital and killed as many as 300,000 people in January may have been caused by an unseen fault and pressure could be building for another quake, seismic experts said on Sunday.


U.N. soldiers from Brazil patrol a street as they past buildings destroyed during an earthquake in downtown Port-au-Prince September 28, 2010. REUTERS/ Eduardo Munoz


Two papers, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, take different approaches but both conclude the fault originally blamed for the quake was not the real source, and that it remains a threat.

"As the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault did not release any significant accumulated elastic strain, it remains a significant seismic threat for Haiti and for Port-au-Prince in particular," Eric Calais of Purdue University in Indiana and colleagues wrote.

"Much work remains to be done to identify and quantify potential earthquake sources in and around Hispaniola, an island where vulnerability to earthquake shaking will probably remain high in the near future," they said.

Haitians are still digging out after the magnitude 7 quake that shattered large parts of Port-au-Prince on January 12, making more than 1 million people homeless. Now cholera has broken out amid the devastation.

more

http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre69n1br-us-quake-haiti/

[Bigmack]

1. Ah but whichever the fault, the problem

continues to be prediction with any precision - Still impossible, alas. Ms Bigmack