Abstract
This study is in the frame of the cooperative line that several Spanish Universities and other foreign partners started with the Haitian government in 2010. According to our studies (Benito et al. in An evaluation of seismic hazard in La Hispaniola, after the 2010 Haiti earthquake, 33rd General Assembly of the European Seismological Commission, Moscow, Russia, 2012) and recent scientific literature, the earthquake hazard in Haiti remains high (Calais et al. in Nat Geosci 3:794–799, 2010). In view of this, we wonder whether the country is currently ready to face another earthquake. In this sense, we estimated several damage scenarios in Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haitien associated to realistic possible major earthquakes. Our findings show that almost 50 % of the building stock of both cities would result uninhabitable due to structural damage. Around 80 % of the buildings in both cities have reinforced concrete structure with concrete block infill; however, the presence of masonry buildings becomes significant (between 25 and 45 % of the reinforced concrete buildings) in rural areas and informal settlements on the outskirts, where the estimated damage is higher. The influence of the soil effect on the damage spatial distribution is evident in both cities. We have found that the percentage of uninhabitable buildings in soft soil areas may be double the percentage obtained in nearby districts located in hard soil. These results reveal that a new seismic catastrophe of similar or even greater consequences than the 2010 Haiti earthquake might happen if the earthquake resilience is not improved in the country. Nowadays, the design of prevention actions and mitigation policies is the best instrument the society has to face seismic risk. In this sense, the results of this research might contribute to define measures oriented to earthquake risk reduction in Haiti, which should be a real priority for national and international institutions.
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Acknowledgments
This work was developed thanks to the financial support of the Technical University of Madrid, through the series of projects SISMO-HAITI. Authors want to acknowledge the support of the National Observatory of the Environment and the Vulnerability of Haiti (ONEV); the National Centre of Geo-Spatial Information of Haiti (CNIGS), particularly Boby Piard; and the Ministry of Public Works, Transport and Communications of Haiti (MTPTC), particularly Charles Baguidy. Thanks also to other foreign institutions that contributed to our work in Haiti and participated in our visits to the country, in particular: Victor Huérfano (Puerto Rico Seismic Network), Eugenio Polanco (University Seismological Institute of Dominican Republic), O’learys Gonzalez (Centro Nacional de Investigationes Sismologicas, Cuba), Kaalent Black (UWI-Earthquake Unit, Jamaica), Conrad Lindholm and Dominik Lang (NORSAR, Norway), Carlos Meneses (TEKPAM, Spain), Julio García (GEM, Italy). The Spanish Geographic Institute (IGN) provided support and capacitation to Haitian engineers oriented to seismic instrument operation. Especially we also want to thank all the Haitian people and organizations that accompanied us in our visits and field campaigns to contribute to data collection and, more important, helped us know and understand the delicate situation they are living. Finally we want to thank the comments of two anonymous reviewers that helped us to improve this paper.
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Torres, Y., Molina, S., Martínez-Cuevas, S. et al. A first approach to earthquake damage estimation in Haiti: advices to minimize the seismic risk. Bull Earthquake Eng 14, 39–58 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10518-015-9813-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10518-015-9813-3