Natural disasters are more likely to destroy the Earth than man-made disasters. A natural disasters is a disaster caused by the earth itself without any help from mankind. Disasters like these affect humans the most because it’s unexpected and can happen at any time with no warning on when it will start or stop. For example, the earthquake that occured in Haiti in 2010 was one of the most destructive earthquake to have happened in the history of earthquakes with a catastrophic magnitude 7.0 Mw.
Haiti is located east of Cuba, between the Caribbean Sea and North Atlantic Ocean. It is known for being one of the poorest countries in the world with a 58.6% poverty rate. The people there don’t have the same benefits that Americans receive, on of them being having a unlimited supply of food or water. The tectonic plates that Haiti sits on top of, have been moving closer to each other by about 0.8 inches every year, which caused the Caribbean plate to move eastward to the North Atlantic plate.
What made the earthquake so powerful to cause the damage it did also had to deal with the release of energy from the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault system. The Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault is a system of coaxial left lateral-moving strike slip faults which runs along the southern side of the island Hispaniola, which Haiti and the Dominican Republic are located.
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On January 12, 2010 and 4:53 PM ET, an earthquake took place in Haiti, destroying everything the Haitians have built for themselves. The “7.0 earthquake struck southern Haiti and severely affected its capital city Port-au-Prince as well as neighboring urban centres. It is the largest event to strike southern Hispaniola since the series of 18th century events” (‘Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering’).
Buildings during the earthquake were falling down at an alarming rate, because the building codes were not held up to the standards that they should have been, which caused them to fall down faster and easier. “Haiti had few building codes , and its impoverished people often lived and worked in shoddily constructed buildings that simply crumbled. Within seconds of the initial quake, hundreds of thousands of people had died. Official estimates of the Haitian government put the death toll at 316,000. Another 300,000 were injured” (‘Global Events: Milestone Events Throughout History’).
The damage the earthquake had left behind was tremendous. There was 60% of the city’s government buildings that were destroyed from the earthquake. This resulted in the city’s government officials not having a way to communicate with their people to inform them of any information. There was 80% of schools that were damaged which left thousands of children with no education.
Building damages were at an all time with 90% of them that were no longer available. Over 316,000 people were killed , and over 300,000 people were injured from the earthquake. Although there were many casualties, 1.5 million survived, but most had become homeless. The overall cost of damages were 10 million US dollars which would only fix the damages from the earthquake, but would not help Haiti regain itself to the way they were before the disaster.
Natural disasters have more power to cause destruction than man-made disaster, because of how unexpected they are. The Haiti 2010 earthquake shows you that natural disasters affect people more by how they can erupt at any time without any notice, unlike how most man-made disaster in which the person knows what they are about to do.
There isn’t anything that can prevent earthquakes from happening since the Earth forms them itself. Since there isn’t any way to prevent natural disasters from happening, the only way you can prepare and protect yourself is by purchasing a fully equipped military ‘A’ grade underground bunker for 1.5 million dollars.
