Here's What Makes Earthquakes So Devastating In Haiti

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The shaking was intensely felt in the cities of Les Cayes and Jeremie—both of which are still recovering from Hurricane Matthew in 2016, which battered the island with 145-mile an hour winds, significant floods, and downpours of rain. This new disaster also strikes as the country is still reeling from the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse on July 7.

"They just have one thing after the other," says Susan Hough, a geophysicist at the United States Geological Survey.

Constantly shifting tectonics

The island of Hispaniola, which includes the countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, sits atop the Caribbean tectonic plate, which is surrounded by a sea of other plates. Between the jostling of the North American, Cocos, South American, and Nazca plates, the Caribbean plate is constantly shoved and squashed by tectonic movements.

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The key juncture that sparks shaking on the surface in Haiti lies just to the north of the island nation, where the Caribbean plate creeps eastward roughly three-quarters of an inch each year relative to the North American plate. Yet the boundary between the plates is not one straight fracture.

As the plates grind against each other, the forces produce a series of fractures that crisscross the region. Both the 2010 event and this latest quake—as well as multiple older quakes—occurred within one set of these breaks, which are known collectively as the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault zone.

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