A modest magnitude with a catastrophic toll — shallow, and directly beneath a dense capital built without seismic codes. Where a quake strikes can matter as much as how big it is.
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DownloadThe 2010 Haiti earthquake struck on January 12, 2010, registering magnitude 7.0 (estimated magnitude). Each whole step on the moment-magnitude scale is roughly 32 times more energy, so this released on the order of 32× the energy of a magnitude 6.0 earthquake.
Its epicenter was located near 18.44°N, 72.57°W, at a depth of about 13 km — a shallow crustal earthquake. Shallow earthquakes like this release their energy close to the surface, which is why the shaking near the epicenter was so violent.
An estimated 316,000 people were killed.