Earthquakes in Haiti
Summary: Claude Prepetit's essay for the LNBTP, "Tremblements de terre en Haïti : mythe ou réalité ?", arguing that Haiti's seismic threat is real and forgotten. It assembles the historical seismicity of the island from Moreau de Saint-Méry's 1797 description, listing eighteen years in which the island shook between 1564 and 1789 with intervals from one to 120 years, sets out the origin of earthquakes and the tectonic situation of Hispaniola, and treats the country's building vulnerability as the author's central worry.
Key Findings
- The argument is about memory, not geology. The essay's claim is that the Haitian collective unconscious no longer holds the earthquake disasters recorded in the country's past, that those memories faded from generation to generation, and that this forgetting, together with a religious confidence in being preserved from natural risk, is why the threat is treated as myth.
- The historical record is specific enough to be checked. Drawing on Moreau de Saint-Méry's 1797 description of the French part of Saint-Domingue, the essay lists eighteen years in which the island shook: 1564, 1684, 1691, 1701, 1713, 1734, 1751, 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1783, 1784, 1785, 1786, 1787, 1788 and 1789, recurrence intervals ranging from one to 120 years.
- Two events are singled out as the ones that marked the island's seismic history, 1751 and 1770, and the 1751 sequence is quoted in detail: violent shaking at Port-au-Prince on 18 October 1751 at two in the afternoon lasting about three minutes, continued rocking until the 25th, the loss of several buildings in Santo Domingo, three further shocks on the 28th, two on the 29th and two more on 19 November.
- The author separates earthquakes from floods on a point of responsibility: unlike floods, earthquakes are a disaster whose causes are entirely independent of human action. The corollary he draws is that only exposure and vulnerability can be acted on.
- Vulnerability, not hazard, is named as the worst case. The section titled the author's worst nightmare is about Haiti's great vulnerability, which places the essay's conclusion on the building stock rather than on the faults.
- The essay is structured for a general reader and opens on two epigraphs about prevention and information, so it reads as public-education material from the national building laboratory rather than as a technical study.
How to cite
National Laboratory for Buildings and Public Works (LNBTP), 2010, Earthquakes in Haiti, https://lnbtp.gouv.ht/publications/Seismes en Haiti.pdf