Destruction levels in the port district of Port-au-Prince after the earthquake from the German DLR-satellite TerraSAR-X

The bulk of the reports about the earthquake of Haiti concentrates on the situation and international help, of course. Not much room for science journalism, it seems. But here: The German news agency dpa (Deutsche Presseagentur) reports today (based on a press release and interview), that satellite-based pictures from the DLR (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt) help organizations with the transportation logistics.

Satellite based damage assessment for Port-au-Prince

With the pictures from the satellite TerraSAR-X organizations like the German Red Cross are able to see, which streets are still drivable or where is enough space for camp sites. This already helped during the Tsunami catastrophe and should help now, too, because the data are available for free over on the DLR-website.

Some newspapers did explain the cause of the earthquake. The Tagesspiegel (Ralf Nestler) raised the question, why Haiti was hit by such a strong quake now, despite hundreds of years without a major tremble. First, the type of rock beneath Port-au-Prince was so stable, that it could bind the pressure of the plate tectonics (according to an expert from the German Geological Research Institute, Potsdam). Since 1751, the last earthquake in Haiti, the rocks were “charged” with energy, which was relieved all at once last week. Another reason for the severeness was, that the center of the quake was in a depth of just 17 kilometers (usually, earthquakes are caused by movements in  depths of ca. 100 kilometers).

The Rheinische Post (Gaby Herzog, Ludwig Jvanovic) takes a little bit broader perspective and explains the plate tectonics of the Caribbean. It’s a good idea to start the article with the sentence, that the quake could have happened in the Dominican Republic, too – many Germans know this part of the island due to vacation trips. The article is a little bit more detailed than the Tagesspiegel one, explaining, that the carribean crust is like a “broken glass pane”, because it is under pressure from both the North- and South-American plate. The article closes with remarks, that despite the earthquake had a high magnitude, the main cause for the destruction is the “catastrophic” structure of the buildings, lack of safety regulations and an overall bad infrastructure.

Other science sections took the “psychology approach” to hastily cover the Haiti top news: ask a psychologist about post traumatic stress disorder, etc.

Zeit online, e.g., interviewed a psychologist from the University of Heidelberg, who struggled to answer, why people tend to be aggressive after living in chaos and hunger for days and how to prevent them to start riots (answer: information). But, for me, it is a bit odd to read about long-term psychotherapy for traumatized Haitian earthquake victims – in a country where people can’t afford live saving drugs like penicillin. The Süddeutsche Zeitung (Berit Uhlmann) describes the past and current health situation in Haiti in more depth, trying to judge, what kind of help is needed first – talking to experts from “Doctors without Borders” about the need for clean water or the Bernhard-Nocht-Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg about the risk of pandemic diseases.

- Sascha Karberg

This entry was posted on Monday, January 18th, 2010 at 3:09 pm and is filed under ETC (grab bag), German Language Media, Science Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.