ABSTRACT
At 4.53 p.m. on 12 January 2010, an earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale struck 16 miles from the centre of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The quake’s shocks devastated the capital’s vulnerable infrastructure, crumbling buildings as grand as the President’s Palace and National Assembly, as well as countless humble homes. As of April 2010, the disaster had claimed the lives of more than 220,000 Haitians through crush injury, starvation, and the lack of basic medical care for communicable and non-communicable disease, and had profoundly and irrevocably impacted the lives of millions more through displacement and both physical and mental trauma (Government of Haiti 2010).
