PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — A magnitude 7.2 earthquake violently shook Haiti on Saturday morning, a deadly blow to an impoverished Caribbean country still recovering from a disastrous but less powerful quake more than 11 years ago.
Heavy damage, trapped victims, chaos and overwhelmed hospitals upended life in at least two cities. The country’s civil protection agency reported that at least 29 people had been killed, and the dead included a powerful local politician in a collapsed hotel he owned.
The quake could hardly have come at a worse time for the nation of 11 million, which has been in the throes of a political crisis since President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated on July 7.
The United States Geological Survey said the quake struck five miles from the town of Petit Trou de Nippes in the western part of the country, about 80 miles west of Port-au-Prince, the capital. Seismologists said it had a depth of seven miles and was felt as far away as 200 miles in Jamaica.
The U.S.G.S. said it was a magnitude 7.2 quake, which can cause enormous damage and was more powerful than the 7.0 quake that hit Haiti in 2010.
At least six aftershocks rippled through the region, the U.S.G.S. said, including one at magnitude 5.1.
Pictures and video posted on social media showed collapsed structures and panicked residents in their pajamas screaming the names of loved ones. A tsunami warning sent others fleeing from the coast. And Tropical Storm Grace was on a path to hit the country, with forecasters saying Haitians should be bracing for it later Saturday.
A general cloud of mayhem and confusion descended across the country’s southern peninsula, including unconfirmed accounts of a prison escape from Jacmel, one of the major cities there.
At least two cities reported major devastation: Les Cayes and Jeremie. Phone lines were down in Petit Trou de Nippes, the epicenter of the quake, and no news emerged immediately from that city, leaving Haitian officials to fear for the worst.
Doctors said the two main hospitals in Les Cayes and the main hospital in Jeremie had been overwhelmed.
“Many houses fell. Many people are trapped under the rubble,” said Widchell Augustin, 35, from Les Cayes, where he lives. “We can hear people screaming under the rubble. People are running back-and-forth to the hospital.”
Videos emerged with people still in their pajamas or bath towels, out in the street seeking refuge from their violently trembling homes. Entire three-story buildings were flattened to eye-level; another video showed a group of men sifting through rubble and trying to remove debris to extract someone stuck underneath.
Gabriel Fortuné, a powerful local politician and former mayor of Les Cayes, was among those killed when the hotel he owned collapsed during the quake, according to a local journalist who knew him, Jude Bonhomme.
One video from Les Cayes showed residents, fearing tsunami warnings triggered by the quake, fleeing a surge of seawater flooding a street. The U.S. Tsunami Warning Center had reported a tsunami threat for some coasts.
Another video from Les Cayes showed the sun blurred out by plumes of dust from the destruction. Houses were flattened, the bricks that once served as their foundation now in a pile of rubble spilling out onto the street.
One man likened it to the cataclysmic earthquake that struck the country in January of 2010.
That earthquake, with a magnitude of 7.0, killed more than 220,000 people and leveled much of the capital, Port-au-Prince. Compounding that crisis, Haiti was hit by a cholera epidemic 10 months later, which sickened 800,000 people and killed 10,000.
Haiti’s southern peninsula, the site of the Saturday quake, was hit hard by Hurricane Matthew in 2016 and, five years later, has still not fully recovered. Remnants of the devastation still linger, with Haiti’s broke government unable to fully restore all the houses, roads and government buildings destroyed.
Maria Abi-Habib reported from Port-au-Prince, and Rick Gladstone from New York.
The earthquake that struck Haiti on Saturday morning occurred on the same system of faults as the one that devastated the capital, Port-au-Prince, in January 2010. And the previous quake almost certainly made this one more likely to occur.
Both quakes struck on an east-west fault line at the convergence of two tectonic plates, large segments of the Earth’s crust that slowly move in relationship to each other. At this fault line, called the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault zone, the Caribbean plate and the North American plate move laterally, or side by side, with respect to each other at a rate of about a quarter of an inch a year.
The 2010 quake was centered about 30 miles west of Port-au-Prince. The quake on Saturday was about 50 miles further west.
Susan E. Hough, a seismologist with the United States Geological Survey who studied the 2010 earthquake, said there was no doubt that it and the one Saturday were linked.
“It’s well established that you do have this domino concept,” she said, where the energy released by one earthquake alters the stress patterns elsewhere along the fault line. “But we don’t have a crystal ball that tells us which domino is going to fall next.”
Dr. Hough said seismologists had been concerned about a region of the fault zone to the east, closer to the 2010 rupture site. “Now we’ve seen the segment to the west rupture,” she said.
She said that the fault ruptured both vertically and laterally. Preliminary analyses suggested that the fault ruptured to the west, which would mean that most of the energy was directed away from Port-au-Prince and toward the more sparsely populated region along the Tiburon peninsula. If that’s the case, then most of the aftershocks that inevitably follow a large earthquake would most likely occur to the west as well.
“To the extent that anything could be good news for Haiti, those are good signs,” Dr. Hough said.
At a magnitude of 7.2, Saturday’s quake released about twice as much energy as the one in 2010, which was a magnitude-7.0 quake. That quake killed more than 200,000 people.
Damage and casualties from quakes depend on many factors besides magnitude. The depth and location of the rupture, the time it occurred and the quality of construction all can play major roles. In the 2010 earthquake, shoddy construction — especially poorly built masonry buildings — was blamed for many of the deaths and injuries.
The fault zone extends west to Jamaica, which is also at risk of major earthquakes. In addition to the 2010 quake, the fault zone was most likely the source of four major earthquakes in the 18th and 19th centuries, including ones that leveled Port-au-Prince in 1751 and again in 1770.
As Haiti reeled from a devastating earthquake on Saturday morning, the threat of another natural disaster loomed over the island. Tropical Storm Grace, which formed in the eastern Caribbean the same morning, was on a path toward Haiti, according to the National Hurricane Center.
The storm was projected to pass near Haiti sometime on Monday or Tuesday, the center said, but it was possible the storm would spare the island just as officials ramp up recovery efforts.
“The current forecast has the center of the storm moving across Puerto Rico and into the Dominican Republic,” said Robbie Berg, a hurricane specialist at the center. “Whether or not it crosses over Haiti is still up in the air.”
If Grace does reach Haiti, Mr. Berg said, heavy winds and rainfall could be expected in the northern part of the country. He also said the earthquake could increase the chance of mudslides.
“It could have shifted some of the ground and soil, which could make mudslides more common,” he said.
The center said that people on the island should monitor the path of Grace, and that tropical storm warnings for Haiti and other nearby islands “will likely be required” later on Saturday.
The center issued a tropical storm watch for parts of the Dominican Republic on Saturday, and the watch would “likely be expanded westward to include Haiti later today and tonight,” said Dennis Feltgen, a spokesman for the center.
Mr. Berg said the storm was not expected to make landfall in Haiti, which means the center of the storm wouldn’t cross over the island itself.
However, he said, “rain is centered all around the storm, so the center won’t mean a whole lot.”
After a powerful earthquake hit Haiti early Saturday, the U.S. Tsunami Warning Center initially reported a tsunami threat and warned of waves between three to 10 feet high.
The threat was then rescinded.
A video circulating on social media showed residents of Les Cayes fleeing a flooded street, splashing through murky, knee-deep water, but it wasn’t clear what caused the flooding.
Earthquakes with a magnitude between 6.5 and 7.5 generally do not produce deadly tsunamis, but they can cause a small sea change level close to a quake’s epicenter, according to the United States Geological Survey.
What happened?
A magnitude-7.2 earthquake struck Haiti on Saturday morning, stronger than the magnitude-7.0 earthquake that devastated the Caribbean country in 2010. The United States Geological Survey said the quake struck five miles from the town of Petit Trou de Nippes in the western part of the country, about 80 miles west of Port-au-Prince, the capital. Seismologists said it had a depth of seven miles. It was felt as far away as Jamaica, 200 miles away.
The U.S. Tsunami Warning Center reported a tsunami threat because of Saturday’s earthquake, saying that “tsunami waves are forecast for some coasts.”
What parts of Haiti were affected?
Two cities, Les Cayes and Jeremie, located in Haiti’s southern peninsula, have reported major devastation with people caught under rubble and buildings collapsed. Phone lines were down in Petit Trou de Nippes, the epicenter of the quake. No news emerged immediately from that city, leaving Haitian officials to fear for the worst. The extent of the damage and casualties is not yet known.
What does this mean for the country?
This earthquake could not have come at a worst time for Haiti, which is still recovering from a 7.0 magnitude earthquake in 2010 that killed more than 220,000 people and leveled much of Port-au-Prince. The southern peninsula, where the earthquake hit, is also still recovering from Hurricane Matthew, which hit the country in 2016.
The country of 11 million is also recovering from political turmoil. Haiti has been in the throes of a political crisis since President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated on July 7, and the government is not financially equipped to take care of repairs.
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