Using details from historical newspaper accounts and letters, seismologists have learned more about Haiti's 1860 Jour de Pâques (Easter Sunday) earthquake sequence, and how it might have impacted the country's most recent devastating earthquakes.
The new analysis published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America suggests that the 1860 sequence may have released strain in an unusual gap between the 2010 magnitude 7.0 Léogâne earthquake and the 2021 magnitude 7.2 Nippes earthquake.
The 2010 and 2021 earthquakes, both of which caused significant deaths and damage, took place on the same fault systems in southern Haiti. Satellite observations collected after the 2021 earthquake showed that the rupture zones for the two earthquakes were separated by a roughly 50-kilometer gap.
