The earthquake in Haiti was bound to happen. As horrible as that sounds, it’s true. As taught in Foundations of Science II, the entire world is made up of tectonic plates. These plates are constantly shifting, which causes all sorts of seismic activity to occur, such as volcanoes or earthquakes.

FOS II teacher, Madeline Drake, explains, “It’s not unusual because the island sits on top of a fault and it was devastating because the capital city was the place where the fault moved, and the government and social structure was not prepared… The other half of the island, the Dominican Republic, wasn’t over the same fault, and so it didn’t experience any earthquake damage.”

Haiti is part of the Caribbean plate, which shifts east almost an inch every year. Like other plates, there are microplates and fault lines. The fault line on which Port-au-Prince lies is a strike-slip fault (a fault that moves left or right laterally and rarely vertically) called the Enriquillo-Plaintain Garden Fault.

Since the last earthquake in 1751, the fault has been locked. According to a 2006 report by Paul Mann, with four others, this caused a strain deficit. If the plate had not been locked it would have moved about two meters over the years. The 259-year strain was like a ticking time bomb, bound to go off with what Mann’s report estimated to be a 7.2 magnitude earthquake. This was not far off, since on January 12, 2010, Haiti experienced a 7.0 magnitude earthquake.

Now, Haitians can hope this plate doesn’t get locked again or they could face another devastating earthquake in the future.