PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti _ Ten years ago, when Haiti was hit by its worst natural disaster in more than a century, the country didn't have its own earthquake surveillance network.
It does now. The problem is, the 10 foreign-trained quake monitors who work there can't stay in the building that houses the unit overnight because it is not earthquake resistant, and even if it were, there isn't enough money to pay anyone to spend the night.
When the ground shakes again, they'll have to run out of the facility's only exit.
"Am I scared? Well, that's the job. I have to do it," said Claude Prepetit, 68, Haiti's foremost earthquake expert and as close as the country gets to having an in-country seismologist. "The conditions are not ideal ... but we have to do it. We have an entire nation that's waiting on us to give them information."
Prepetit is not actually a seismologist. He's a geologist and the director of Haiti's Bureau of Mines and Energy, and supervises the small seismic monitoring team inside the one-story structure in the city of Delmas. The city is part of the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area that was decimated by the catastrophic magnitude 7 earthquake on Jan. 12, 2010.
Before the quake, Haiti had to consult the global U.S. Geological Survey for information on earthquakes larger than magnitude 4. Since Prepetit set up the network in 2011, Haiti now receives information broadcast via satellite from solar-powered seismic stations dotted around the country, and via internet from a network of seismometers that record tremors in real time. The seismic team analyzes the data and issues bulletins on quake occurrences and the potential for future earthquakes.
