The earthquake was 7.0 or more (see Eruptions for info and discussion) and was not far from Port-au-Prince. Apparently damage is widespread and intense, and casualties high, but accurate information is limited because the information infrastructure was destroyed (see this for news details).
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Links to books and other items on this page and elsewhere on Greg Ladens' blog may send you to Amazon, where I am a registered affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which helps to fund this site.
Been watching this too – we have two nieces who went there just after New Year for mission work. they were scheduled to leave today but haven’t heard from them – am hoping they are (only) late to get out or having trouble getting to the airport.
dean, hope your nieces are fine! Prayers sent to both your nieces and the people of Haiti.
Amateur earthquake watchers might like to look at the IRIS Seismic Monitor site:
http://www.iris.edu/seismon/
Yeah, there’s been about 10 ca 5 mag aftershocks since the initial earthquake, according to that resource.
Holy crap, M7 is huge. I’ve been ~80km from the epicenter of an earthquake that size and the ground motion was still about 1m in the horizontal and maybe as much as 30cm in the vertical. If a quake that size hit any Australian city the city would be flattened; buildings there start to collapse in earthquakes that Californians simply shrug off.
@MadScientist
[Not so] funny thing, my friends and I were just discussing the same idea – last week, we had a 6.5 up in Humbolt here in CA, and it was ‘felt’ but no real big problems (and it was felt). Same thing happens anywhere they are are unprepared, and buildings fall.Good thing we learned our lesson
Horrible images from Haiti this morning – I’m glad I didn’t see them last night.
Our nieces did get out -both of their phones and their laptop were out of juice, so they couldn’t communicate: my sister-in-law says when she spoke to them (from florida overnight) they told her their plane left a few hours before. lucky, but far too many weren’t.