‘In 1988, the Spitak magnitude-6.9 earthquake in Armenia took more than 25,000 lives. By contrast the magnitude-7.1 Loma Prieta earthquake in California in 1989 caused only 63 deaths. “The difference in the numbers of fatalities illustrates the huge effect that high building standards can have in saving people’s lives,” says DeMets.

The multi-storey concrete buildings that made up much of Port-au-Prince proved to be death traps when the earthquake struck. “The buildings were brittle and had no flexibility, breaking catastrophically when the earthquake struck,” says Ian Main, a seismologist at the University of Edinburgh, UK.

And the disaster was compounded by the earthquake’s shallow source. “With deep earthquakes the primary waves arrive first, giving you a bit of warning before the shear waves [responsible for shaking the ground from side to side] arrive,” says Uri ten Brink, an expert on earthquakes in the Caribbean from the US Geological Survey in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. In Haiti the epicentre was so close to the surface that the primary and shear waves arrived almost at the same time.’ (New Scientist)