the destructive earthquake in haiti in 2010 was the result of
2010 Haiti earthquake The quake occurred in the vicinity of the northern boundary where the Caribbean tectonic plate shifts eastwards by about 20 mm (0.79 in) per year in relation to the North American plate. The strike-slip fault system in the region has two branches in Haiti, the Septentrional-Oriente fault in the north and the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault in the south; both its location and focal mechanism suggested that the January 2010 quake was caused by a rupture of the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault, which had been locked for 250 years, gathering stress.[32] However, a study published in May 2010 suggested that the rupture process may have involved slip on multiple blind thrust faults with only minor, deep, lateral slip along or near the main Enriquillo–Plantain Garden fault zone, suggesting that the event only partially relieved centuries of accumulated left-lateral strain on a small part of the plate-boundary system.[27] The rupture was roughly 65 km (40 mi) long with mean slip of 1.8 metres (5 ft 11 in).[33] Preliminary analysis of the slip distribution found amplitudes of up to about 4 m (13 ft) using ground motion records from all over the world.[34][35]