The 1770 Port-au-Prince earthquake took place at 7:15 pm local time on June 3, on the Enriquillo fault near Port-au-Prince, Saint-Domingue, the French colony that is now the country of Haiti.

Damage

The earthquake was strong enough to destroy Port-au-Prince, and leveled all the buildings between Lake Miragoâne and

Petit-Goâve Petit-Goâve ( ht, Ti Gwav) is a coastal commune in the Léogâne Arrondissement in the Ouest department of Haiti. It is located southwest of Port-au-Prince. The town has a population of approximately 12,000 inhabitants. History The town is ...

, to the west of Port-au-Prince. The

Plain of the Cul-de-Sac Plain of the Cul-de-Sac (french: Plaine du Cul-de-Sac, also known as the Cul-de-Sac Plain, or the Cul-de-Sac Depression) is a fertile lowland on the island of Hispaniola. It extends from southeastern Haiti into the southwestern Dominican Republic, ...

, a

rift valley A rift valley is a linear shaped lowland between several highlands or mountain ranges created by the action of a geologic rift. Rifts are formed as a result of the pulling apart of the lithosphere due to extensional tectonics. The linear d ...

under Port-au-Prince that extends eastwards into the

Dominican Republic The Dominican Republic ( ; es, República Dominicana, ) is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean region. It occupies the eastern five-eighths of the island, which it shares with ...

, experienced extensive soil liquefaction. The ground under Port-au-Prince liquefied, throwing down all its buildings, including those that had survived the 1751 earthquake. One village, Croix des Bouquets, sank below sea level. Strong shocks were felt in

Cap-Haïtien Cap-Haïtien (; ht, Kap Ayisyen; "Haitian Cape"), typically spelled Cape Haitien in English and often locally referred to as or , is a commune of about 190,000 people on the north coast of Haiti and capital of the department of Nord. Previousl ...

, about away from the estimated epicenter in the

Léogâne Arrondissement Léogâne ( ht, Leyogàn) is an arrondissement in the Ouest Department of Haiti. As of 2015, the population was 509,280 inhabitants. Postal codes in the Léogâne Arrondissement start with the number 62. The arondissement consists of the followi ...

. Some chimneys on the distant island of

Jamaica Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of His ...

collapsed. It is estimated that 200 people died in Port-au-Prince in collapsed buildings, including 79 of the 80 people in Port-au-Prince's hospital. The death toll would have been higher, but the earthquake was preceded by a rumbling noise that gave people time to flee their houses before the main tremor, which consisted of two shocks lasting a total of four minutes. Fifty people died in Léogâne.

Tsunami

The earthquake generated a

tsunami A tsunami ( ; from ja, 津波, lit=harbour wave, ) is a series of waves in a water body caused by the displacement of a large volume of water, generally in an ocean or a large lake. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other underwater exp ...

that came ashore along the

Gulf of Gonâve The Gulf of Gonâve (french: Golfe de la Gonâve; ht, Gòf Lagonav) is a large gulf of the Caribbean Sea along the western coast of Haiti. Haiti's capital city, Port-au-Prince, is located on the coast of the gulf. Other cities on the gulf coast ...

, and rolled as much as inland into the Cul-de-Sac depression, though this might have been confounded with the effects of the liquefaction.

Aftermath

The aftermath of the earthquake saw much more death as thousands of slaves escaped in the chaos, the local economy collapsed and 15,000 slaves died in the subsequent famine. An additional 15,000 people died from what is thought to have been gastrointestinal anthrax from eating tainted meat bought from Spanish traders.

Damage

Tsunami

Aftermath

See also

References

Further reading