On January 12, 2010 Haiti, a country in the Caribbean Sea that shares its borders with the Dominican Republic, was faced with an earthquake that hit 7.0 in magnitude. According to the earthquake magnitude scale, a magnitude of 7.0 to 7.9 is considered a major earthquake that can inflict serious damage which is the case for Haiti. Even after the earthquake was over the country still faced aftershocks which ranged from 5.5 to 5.9 in magnitude, which can still inflict ‘slight damage to buildings and other structures’. This earthquake not only had an impact on Haiti, but the Dominican Republic as well. It is estimated that around three million people were affected by the earthquake and of that around 220,000 to 316,000 are estimated to have died. There were over one million people displaced and left homeless because of the earthquake. Many of Haiti’s infrastructure was not up to the building code standard leading to many important landmarks in the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince, to be heavily damaged. Buildings collapsing lead to the trapping and unfortunate killings of the occupants. In addition to this, several thousand inmates …show more content…
Roads being blocked with debris, communication lines being down, and a failure in the electric power system hinder the efforts of organizations and citizens to assist those in need of supplies such as food, water, and medicine. Relief efforts across the world came together to aid Haiti in 13.5 billion dollars in donations and pledges. In addition to monetary funds, ‘the world sent doctors, relief workers, and supplies in the wake of the disaster’. Despite the ‘unprecedented help’ received by Haiti considering that it is such a small country, in 2015, 5 years after the natural disaster there was not much of a difference seen in the economy, and the infrastructure that Haitians were forced into after the