Haiti’s Terrible Tragedy
Understanding the conditions in one of the poorest countries
When the Great Hanshin Earthquake happened in 1995, Rin and her family lived in the southern part of Osaka. Rin was only one year old at the time, so she doesn’t remember how bad it was. However, her parents have often told her what happened. No one in her family was killed, but her parents lost some close friends in the disaster. Therefore, it is quite natural for Rin’s parents to show their concern when they heard about the big earthquake in Haiti. Rin had never even heard of Haiti before this, so she decided to learn more about the country and the earthquake.
The Republic of Haiti is an island country in the Caribbean Sea. It shares the Hispaniola Island with the Dominican Republic. To the northwest is Cuba, and to the west Jamaica. Haiti has a complicated history. After Christopher Columbus discovered the Hispaniola Island in 1492, Spanish people migrated with slaves from Africa and made the island their colony. In the 17th century, French people also started to move in from the western part of the island, also with black slaves. By 1697 they controlled the western third of the island, which created today’s border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The slaves started a revolution in the late 1700s. Their revolution gained power, and on January 1, 1804, Haiti became independent from France. Its leader then drove the white people out of the country and started the first country governed by blacks.
Since it became independent, Haiti has not been a very wealthy country. The government has always been unstable and its economy has had all kinds of troubles. The country’s main industries, sugar and coffee beans, are very small. Two-thirds of the Haitian people are engaged in farming, which does not earn them much money. Most people live on just a dollar or two a day. Haiti is believed to be the poorest country in the western hemisphere. Therefore, a natural disaster would be devastating to Haiti for many reasons.
On January 12, 2010, a huge earthquake of magnitude 7.0 struck Haiti. More than 50 aftershocks of magnitude 4.5 or greater followed. Because there had been no major earthquakes in Haiti since 1946, the building and houses were not built to be earthquake-proof. Many buildings collapsed and trapped many people under their wreckage. The epicenter of the earthquake was near Port-au-Prince, the capital. The government buildings, including the president’s palace, were seriously damaged. Many important government functions stopped. In areas near the epicenter, 90 per cent of the schools were destroyed.
