Haitian quake no shock to geologists

Although the magnitude-7.0 earthquake that shook Haiti on Jan. 12 was a horrible shock for millions of people in and around the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, the event came as no surprise to geologists. For years, scientists familiar with the geology of the region had been warning that the island of Hispaniola, which Haiti shares with the Dominican Republic, was overdue for a major quake.

In March 2008, several research teams from the United States presented data at the 18th Caribbean Geological Conference in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, warning that Hispaniola’s two major east-west trending strike-slip faults, the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden Fault in the south and the Septentrional Fault in the north, were both due for a major event. Using GPS data, the teams calculated that either fault could produce a magnitude-7.2 quake at any time.

“As with all earthquake forecasting, the big problem was that we couldn’t provide any information about timing,” says Paul Mann, a geologist at the University of Texas at Austin who presented at the conference. “We couldn’t say if the earthquake would happen in two days or 10 years.” Eric Calais, a geophysicist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., who also presented at the meeting says, “We had talked to a number of government officials about the risk and they were very receptive. They just didn’t have enough time to do much to prepare for such an event, especially with Haiti’s other pressing problems.”

http://www.earthmagazine.org/earth/article/2f0-7da-1-15

Auf der Insel Hispaniola gibt es eine grössere Anzahl von Risikobruchgebieten,
von denen hier besonders der Enriquillo-Plantain Garden Fault im Süden und der Septentrional Fault im Norden angesprochen wird.
Port au Prince liegt am äussersten westlichen Ende des Enriquillo Grabens und Samana liegt am östlichen Ende des Septentrional Bruches. Die Frage ist nun, ob beide in einem Zusammenhang stehen.