As Haiti reels from yesterday's massive earthquake and its continued aftershocks, and nations rush to put rescue efforts together, scientists analyzing the seismic event say this disaster may have been a long time coming.
The earthquake in Haiti had a preliminary magnitude of 7.0 and it appeared to have occurred along a strike-slip fault, where one side of a vertical fault slips horizontally past the other, scientists say [AP]
. This fault, called the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault, may have been slowly building up pressure since the major 1760 earthquake that struck Haiti.
"It's been locked solid for about the last 250 years," said Dr Roger Musson from the British Geological Survey (BGS). "It's been gathering stress all that time as the plates move past each other, and it was really just a matter of time before it released all that energy" [BBC News]
. Chillingly, scientists led by Paul Mann ...
