More quakes ahead, warns expert

HAITI and its neighbours must prepare themselves for more massive quakes after the devastating tremors this week increased pressure along a lengthy fault line, scientists have warned.

Paul Mann, a senior research scientist at the Institute for Geophysics at the University of Texas at Austin, warned that just because the rebuilding process had started people shouldn’t assume the risk was over.

“This relief of stress along this area near Port-au- Prince may have actually increased stress in the adjacent segments on the fault,” he said.

Researchers have already begun to work on models to try to predict how the stress changes resulting from the 7.0-magnitude quake which struck on Tuesday is affecting the adjacent segments of the fault.

“This fault system is hundreds of kilometres long and the segment that ruptured to form this earthquake is only 80km long,” Mann said.