Geotechnical Engineering Reconnaissance of the 2010 Haiti Earthquake

February 21, 2018

By Ellen Rathje, Jeff Bachhuber, Brady Cox, Jim French, Russell Green, Scott Olson, Glenn Rix, Donald Wells, Oscar Suncar, Ed Harp, Paul Mann, and Rich Koehler.

February 2010, GEER

On January 12, 2010 a magnitude Mw 7.0 earthquake struck the Port-au-Prince region of Haiti.

The earthquake epicenter was located immediately west of the city of Port-au-Prince, and the damage induced by this event was extreme. It is estimated that over 200,000 people were killed during the earthquake, and several hundred thousand injured. A strike-slip Mw = 7 event that affects ground near the margins of a bay represents a common earthquake scenario in the United States and throughout the world, and thus it was important to document the aspects of this event.

GEER mobilized a reconnaissance team, funded by the United States National Science Foundation, consisting of geotechnical engineers and engineering geologists from both the United States and the Dominican Republic

Read the Report: Geotechnical Engineering Reconnaissance of the 2010 Haiti Earthquake (18.5 MB PDF)