St Edward's Academic Review 2025

ST EDWARD’S, OXFORD

the huge risk of a major seismic hazard on the island of Hispaniola, which Haiti shares with the Dominican Republic (Griggs, 2010). A senior research scientist at the University of Texas’s Institute of Geophysics, Paul Mann, stated that ‘the problem with these kinds of strikes is that they can remain quiescent for hundreds of years’ which is a major reason for the difficulty in making predictions.

boundary between the Gonâve microplate, a fragment of the North American Plate on which Haiti is located, and the Caribbean Plate. It was later discovered that the contractional deformation along the Léogâne fault, a small hidden thrust fault discovered beneath the city of Léogâne, caused the earthquake. The Léogâne fault descends northward at an oblique angle away from the EPG fault system and many geologists believe that the earthquake was caused by rock slippage upward across its plane of fracture (Pallardy, 2023). Because it occurred at 6.2 miles below the surface, a shallow depth, its powerful energy had a devastating effect at ground level (Reid, 2022). Dr Luigi Di Sarno, a member of a team of specialist advisers brought to help the government of Haiti prepare for future earthquakes following the disaster in 2010, recounted his experience of another earthquake in Haiti in 2021. He recalled that he was on the 21st floor of a hotel in the Dominican Republic when he felt the room begin to shake. In his words, ‘The picture frames were swinging, and I could see that the flat screen TV in front of the bed was also rocking from side to side. It took me a few seconds to realise that the tremors the building was experiencing were caused by an earthquake.’ He went on to say that his initial thought, based on experience during tropical storms, was that the swinging of the picture frames was as a result of a strong wind passing through the windows. Later, he discovered through the United States Geological Survey (USGS) that a 7.2 magnitude earthquake had occurred, localised near the city of Les Cayes, a city in south-west Haiti about 200 kilometers away from where he was staying (Sarno & Mannis, 2021). Dr Di Sarno has stated that there have been very few improvements in formulating a project that could assist with predicting future earthquakes between the 2010 earthquake and the 2021 earthquake. He confirmed that seismometers recording data on strong motions have been installed in some private residences in various locations throughout Haiti however the information has not been effectively harnessed for early warning alerts. Dr Di Sarno also discovered that at least two strong motions (magnitude 4.0 or higher) were recorded along the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault prior to the earthquake in 2021. The warning signs were there, but no one was paying attention to them. This shows that although data is available for to make predictions, the data was not being used and warning signs were ignored prior to the earthquake. A report by CNN in 2010 stated that scientists warned about

Turkey-Syria Earthquake: 6th February 2023

Another catastrophic earthquake that occurred more recently was the earthquake in Turkey and Syria on 6th February 2023, at 4.17am local time. It had a magnitude of 7.8 and led to over 56,000 casualties and left at least a further 126,000 injured. The initial earthquake struck at a depth of 17.9 kilometers near Nurdagi in Gaziantep province. A second earthquake followed with a magnitude of 7.5 at 1.24pm local time and according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), thousands of aftershocks rumbled across the region (Omer, 2023). Also, the earthquake displaced at least 2.5 million people across both countries. Although the situation is still developing, it is estimated that over 200,100 buildings have been destroyed and the property damage is estimated to be around $109 billion. According to PreventionWeb (2023), the area of Turkey that was affected by the earthquake is an earthquake-prone area as it lies at the intersection of the Anatolian, Arabian and African plates. The Arabian plate is moving northwards towards Europe, causing the Anatolian plate (which is a microplate that makes up most of Turkey) to be pushed out westwards. The movement of the tectonic plates builds up pressure on fault lines at their boundaries. Earthquakes and ground shaking are caused by the rapid release of this pressure (Jenkins, 2023). Jenkins claims that the earthquake in Turkey and Syria most likely occurred on one of the major faults that separate the Anatolian and Arabian plates: the East Anatolian fault or the Dead Sea Transform fault. These are both strike-slip faults, meaning that they accommodate some motion of plates moving past each other. A major reason for the occurrence of earthquakes in Turkey is the collision between Africa and Europe which causes the Anatolian plate to be squeezed westwards (Kaste, 2023). This earthquake is believed to be the strongest to hit Turkey since 1939 when an earthquake of the same magnitude killed 30,000 people. To add to the

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