On 12 January 2010, at 4:53 p.m. local time, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck the Republic of Haiti, with an epicenter located approximately 25 km south and west of the capital city of Port-au-Prince. Near the epicenter of the earthquake, in the city of Le´ogaˆne, it is estimated that 80%–90% of the buildings were critically damaged or destroyed. The metropolitan Port-au-Prince region, which includes the cities of Carrefour, Pe´tion-Ville, Delmas, Tabarre, Cite Soleil, and Kenscoff, was also severely affected. According to the Government of Haiti, the earthquake left more than 316,000 dead or missing, 300,000 injured, and over 1.3 million homeless (GOH 2010). According to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) the earthquake was the most destructive event any country has experienced in modern times when measured in terms of the number of people killed as a percentage of the country’s population (Cavallo et al. 2010).
The Republic of Haiti occupies the western third (27,750 km2) of the island of Hispaniola, located in the northeast Caribbean between Puerto Rico to the east and Jamaica and Cuba to the west (Figure 1), and had a population of approximately 9.6 million prior to the earthquake. The metropolitan area surrounding its largest city, Port-au-Prince, has an estimated population of 3 million. Haiti has been impacted by other natural disasters in recent years. In 2008, more than 800 people were killed by a series of four hurricanes and tropical storms that struck Haiti during a two-month period.
The damage to the infrastructure from the earthquake in Haiti was staggering. More than 300,000 homes collapsed or were critically damaged. It is estimated that 60% of the nation’s administrative and economic infrastructure was lost, and 80% of the schools and more than 50% of the hospitals were destroyed or damaged (GOH 2010). More than 180 government buildings and 13 out of 15 key government offices collapsed, including the presidential palace and parliament. The partial destruction of the main port of Port-au-Prince and blockage of roads from debris hampered the response and recovery for many months after the earthquake. Even nine months after the earthquake, the destruction continued to disrupt the lives of many Haitians. The Interim Haitian Reconstruction Commission estimated that as of 12 October, 1.3 million people were still displaced—either in one of the more than 1,300 camps and other settlements registered by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) or in temporary housing situations in both the quake-affected zone and in non-affected regions (IHRC 2010). Overall losses and damages from the earthquake are estimated to be between US$7 billion and US$14 billion (approximately 100%–200% of Haiti’s gross domestic product), making this the most costly earthquake event in terms of the percentage of a country’s gross domestic product (Cavallo et al. 2010).
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