A strong earthquake struck Haiti just after midnight New Zealand time, just over a week after the devastating major quake of the morning of January 13th.
Thursday 21st January 2010
A shallow magnitude 6.1 aftershock struck the Caribbean nation of Haiti at four minutes after midnight New Zealand time. The quake, which early analysis puts at a depth of 10 km, was located 60 km west-south-west of Port-au-Prince, 95 km east-north-east of Les Cayes, Haiti according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre issued a bulletin at eleven minutes after midnight advising that a tsunami was not expected from the earthquake, which they estimated at magnitude 6.0, as it was located too far inland to generate a tsunami in the Caribbean Sea.
This is the largest aftershock to have followed last Wednesday’s magnitude 7.0 earthquake which was located 25 km west-south-west of Port-au-Prince at a depth of 13 km. That quake caused widespread damage on the island of Hispaniola and killed tens of thousands of people in Haiti. With the country’s fragile infrastructure wrecked by the quake, the relief effort for the many injured and homeless has only just begun to take effect. An aftershock of this strength at such a shallow depth will have terrible consequences.
[Compiled from data supplied by the U.S. Geological Survey and its contributing agencies; and the U.S. National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration’s Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre.]