An Explanation of How the Earthquake Occurred
The earthquake hit Haiti was a magnitude 7.0. It struck Haiti, a little Caribbean nation shown on the globe above, on Tuesday, January 12, 2010, at 4:53 p.m. (local time). So how was the earthquake caused? Well, the North American plate is moving West, and in doing so it is grating against the Caribbean plate (As you can see in the diagram to the left). Somewhere along the move, the two plates caught and pressure began to build because the North American plate was still trying to move West. This pressure had to be released somewhere, so it was released at the weakest point, the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault line (which housed the epicentre of the earthquake, as illustrated below), as a shockwave which traveled through the earth.