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Pure and Applied Geophysics
pageoph
ISSN 0033-4553
Volume 170
Combined 9-10
Pure Appl. Geophys. (2013)
170:1463-1474
DOI 10.1007/s00024-012-0479-3
Twin Tsunamis Triggered by the 12
January 2010 Haiti Earthquake
Hermann M.Fritz, Jean Vilmond
Hillaire, Emanuel Molière, Yong Wei &
Fahad Mohammed
1 23
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Twin Tsunamis Triggered by the 12 January 2010 Haiti Earthquake
HERMANN M. FRITZ,
1
JEAN VILMOND HILLAIRE,
2
EMANUEL MOLIE
`
RE,
3
YONG WEI,
4,5
and FAHAD MOHAMMED
1
Abstract—On 12 January 2010, a magnitude M
w
7.0 earth-
quake occurred 25 km west–southwest of Haiti’s capital Port-
au-Prince causing an estimated 316,000 fatalities, thereby exceeding
any previous loss of life from a similar size earthquake. In addition,
tsunami waves triggered by the earthquake caused at least three
fatalities at Petit Paradis due to a complete lack of tsunami
awareness. The International Tsunami Survey Team (ITST) was
deployed within weeks of the event and covered the greater Bay of
Port-au-Prince and more than 100 km of Hispaniola’s southern
coastline. The collected survey data include more than 21 tsunami
heights along with observations of coastal land level change.
Maximum tsunami heights of 3 m have been measured for two
independently triggered tsunamis.
Key words: Haiti, Dominican Republic, Caribbean, tsunami,
earthquake, field survey, numerical modeling.
1. Introduction
On 12 January 2010 at 21:53:10 UTC (4:53:10 pm
local time), the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden Fault
(EPGF) ruptured after 240 years of inactivity, result-
ing in a magnitude M
w
7.0 earthquake in the vicinity
of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The epicenter of the earth-
quake was located at 18.443°N, 72.571°W, 25 km
WSW of Port-au-Prince at a shallow depth of 13 km
(H
AYES et al., 2010;NETTLES and HJO
¨
RLEIFSDO
´
TTIR,
2010). According to the Government of Haiti, the
earthquake resulted in 316,000 people killed, 300,000
injured, 1.3 million displaced out of a population of
9.7 million, and more than 300,000 houses destroyed
or critically damaged in the Port-au-Prince area and in
much of southern Haiti (GOH 2010;D
ESROCHES et al.,
2011). Other estimates suggest substantially lower
numbers of casualties, perhaps as low as 100,000. By
all estimates, the numbers of casualties exceed any
previous loss of life from a similar size earthquake
(B
ILHAM, 2010). Most of the fatalities were crushed by
collapsing unreinforced buildings. Survivors sus-
tained severe trauma but had little access to tertiary
care (W
ALTON and IVERS, 2011). The devastating
societal impact of the earthquake is reflected in
the creation of the new Haitian-Creole onomato-
poeic term ‘‘Goudou–Goudou’’ for the earthquake
(B
ELLEGARDE-SMITH, 2011). The earthquake created a
tremendous medical disaster with near-total destruc-
tion of the Haitian health care system. Initial injuries
in Haiti were primarily low-velocity, high-force
trauma and wound infections (A
MUNDSON et al., 2010;
W
ALK et al., 2011). In contrast, drowning and water-
related injuries were the primary cause of immediate
death in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami (S
YNOLAKIS
and KONG, 2006;FRITZ and BORRERO, 2006). The
earthquake triggered independent twin tsunamis along
the coastlines inside the Gulf of Gona
ˆ
ve and along
Haiti’s south coast resulting in wave induced flooding
and damage to coastal infrastructure. The tsunami
waves caused at least three fatalities at Petit Paradis
inside the Gulf of Gona
ˆ
ve due to a complete lack of
tsunami awareness. Hence, about 1 per 100,000
fatalities are attributed to the Haitian tsunamis, while
during the 2010 Chile earthquake the split was one
tsunami to four earthquake fatalities (F
RITZ et al.,
2011), and the 2011 Japan tsunami accounted for
92.5 % of the fatalities (F
RITZ et al., 2012). During the
2010 Haiti tsunamis, the Pacific Tsunami Warning
1
School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia
Institute of Technology, Savannah, GA 31407, USA. E-mail:
fritz@gatech.edu
2
Universite
´
Quisqueya, Port-au-Prince, Haiti. E-mail:
hvilmond@yahoo.fr
3
Ecole Nationale de Ge
´
ologie Applique
´
e, Port-au-Prince,
Haiti. E-mail: chapeshai@yahoo.fr
4
Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, NOAA, Seattle,
WA 98115, USA. E-mail: yong.wei@noaa.gov
5
Joint Institute for the Study of Atmosphere and Ocean
(JISAO), University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98105, USA.
Pure Appl. Geophys. 170 (2013), 1463–1474
Ó 2012 Springer Basel AG
DOI 10.1007/s00024-012-0479-3
Pure and Applied Geophysics
Author's personal copy
Center (PTWC) responded and issued a first message
10 min after the earthquake, but all communications
to Haiti were interrupted by the earthquake and none
of the Haitian contact points could be reached.
Haiti, along with the Dominican Republic, shares
the island of Hispaniola (76,480 km
2
) and occupies
roughly the western third (27,450 km
2
) of the island
(Fig. 1). Oblique convergence between the Caribbean
and North American plates is partitioned between
thrust motion along the north Hispaniola fault zone
and two major east–west trending, strike-slip fault
systems: the Septentrional fault system in northern
Haiti and the Enriquillo–Plantain Garden fault
(EPGF) system in southern Haiti (M
ANAKER et al.,
2008;C
ALAIS et al., 2010). The EPGF fault zone starts
offshore to the west of Haiti, bisects Haiti’s southern
peninsula and then extends into the Dominican
Republic and towards the Muertos trough. Several
earthquakes were recorded by French historian
M
OREAU DE SAINT-ME
´
RY (1750–1819) during the
French Colonial period (M
OREAU DE SAINT-ME
´
RY,
1958). During the last 500 years, large earthquakes
have occurred in Hispaniola (S
CHERER, 1912;TABER,
1922). The 12 January 2010 Haiti M
w
7.0 earthquake
represents the largest event to rupture the EPGF
system since the 21 November 1751 and 3 June
1770 earthquakes, which caused severe damage in
Port-au-Prince (P
RENTICE et al., 2010). A large
earthquake on 18 October 1751 is associated with the
offshore Muertos fault (A
LI et al., 2008). Large his-
torical earthquakes in 1564 and 1842 occurred along
the Septentrional fault in northwestern Hispaniola
(K
ELLEHER et al., 1973). The 1842 event triggered a
tsunami that affected the Port-de-Paix region in
northern Haiti. They were followed by a tsunami-
genic sequence of M
w
7.5 to 8.1 events between 1946
and 1953 in the northeast of the Dominican Republic
(M
ANN et al., 1995). On 4 August 1946 an M
w
8.1
earthquake struck off the northeastern shore of His-
paniola resulting in a destructive tsunami with 1,790
fatalities in the Dominican Republic and observed
runup in Puerto Rico (O’L
OUGHLIN and LANDER,
2003). Examples of historical tsunamis in the Carib-
bean further west along the EPGF zone include the
disastrous 1692 Port Royal landslide generated tsu-
nami in Jamaica, caused by a slump into Kingston
harbor killing some 2,000 (E
LLIS, 1892;PAWSON and
B
UISSERET, 1975), and a smaller tsunami associated
with the 1907 Kingston earthquake (F
ULLER, 1907).
At least ten significant tsunamis have been docu-
mented in the northern Caribbean since 1498, six of
which are known to have resulted in loss of life
(O’L
OUGHLIN and LANDER, 2003;PARSONS and GEIST,
2008). Rapid population increase in the Caribbean
Figure 1
Tectonic setting of Hispaniola Island with selected historic earthquakes. EPGF Enriquillo–Plantain Garden Fault; SF Septentrional Fault
(Ali et al., 2008; Calais et al., 2010)
1464 H. M. Fritz et al. Pure Appl. Geophys.
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exposes more coastal residents to future tsunami
events (G
RINDLAY et al., 2005).
2. Post-Tsunami Reconnaissance
The Haiti and Dominican Republic survey took
place from 31 January to 7 February 2010. The
International Tsunami Survey Team (ITST) covered
more than 100 km of coastline inside the Gulf of
Gona
ˆ
ve from Petit-Goa
ˆ
ve to Luly and more than
100 km of Hispaniola’s south coast between Peder-
nales, Dominican Republic and Jacmel, Haiti. The
survey team documented tsunami runup, flow depth
and inundation, wave induced deposition or erosion,
structural damage and interviewed eyewitnesses
using established protocols (S
YNOLAKIS and OKAL,
2005). The Hispaniola survey data includes 21 runup
and flow depth measurements shown in Fig. 2 and
Table 1. Measured data were corrected for predicted
tide levels at the time of tsunami. Predicted tidal
ranges at Port-au-Prince and Jacmel are typically on
the order of 0.6 m such as on 12 January 2010. The
tsunami impacts peaked with maximum tsunami
heights exceeding 3 m both at Petit Paradis inside the
Bay of Grand-Goa
ˆ
ve on the north coast of Haiti’s
southern peninsula and at Jacmel on Haiti’s south
coast.
Figure 2
Tsunami flow depths and runup heights measured along coastlines in the Gulf of Gona
ˆ
ve and along Hispaniola’s south coast
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3. Coastal Landslide Tsunami in Bay of Grand
Goaˆve
A coastal landslide generated tsunami was surveyed
at Petit Paradis inside the Bay of Grand Goa
ˆ
ve located
45 km west–southwest of Port-au-Prince (http://www.
nature.com/news/2010/100225/full/news.2010.93.html).
Approximately 400 m of coastline failed co-seismi-
cally resulting in a land loss of up to 100 m in cross-
shore direction based on pre- and post-earthquake
satellite imagery shown in Fig. 3. The landslide gen-
erated tsunami was only observed along adjacent
coastlines within a few kilometers both to the east and
west of the landslide source. The tsunami peaked with
maximum tsunami heights exceeding 3 m at Petit
Paradis less than a kilometer to the east of the landslide
source. The cross-shore inundation distances remained
below 100 m. Several independent eyewitnesses con-
firmed the co-seismic nature of the coastal landslide
and the subsequent tsunami arrival within less than a
minute of the earthquake. The eyewitness reports
indicate a single main wave with a flooding duration
of tens of seconds. The sub-minute wave period and
tsunami arrival time at Petit Paradis along with the
coastal land loss and localized tsunami impact identify
a coastal submarine landslide as tsunami source
(Fig. 4a–d). Sub-minute to minute wave periods have
been determined for other landslide tsunamis such as
Lituya Bay, Alaska, in 1958 (F
RITZ et al., 2009).
Multibeam and chirp surveys mapped the submarine
sediment deformations and offshore landslide tracks in
the Bay of Grand Goa
ˆ
ve (H
ORNBACH et al., 2010). The
triggered tsunami waves caused at least three con-
firmed fatalities, damaged houses and destroyed
fishing boats at Petit Paradis. Eyewitnesses observed
the three victims consisting of two boys at pre-school
age accompanied by their grandfather standing in the
field staring at the engulfing landslide to be washed
away by the tsunami seconds later. The victims did not
try to evacuate. Unfortunately, the people of Haiti had
neither the ancestral knowledge nor educational
awareness of tsunami hazards that saved many natives
from near-field tsunamis in the Solomon Islands in
2007 (F
RITZ and KALLIGERIS, 2008). In addition, coastal
land-level changes in the submeter range are docu-
mented along coastlines near the epicenter along the
Table 1
Tsunami dataset recorded in Haiti and the Dominican Republic by the International Tsunami Survey Team (ITST) from 3 to 7 February 2010
Pt. Site Latitude (°N) Longitude (°E) z ? h (m) R (m) I (m) Date and time surveyed (UTC) Watermark
1 Grand-Goa
ˆ
ve, P.P. 18.42975 -72.74990 1.73 20.0 3-Feb-2010 20:22 WL, EW
2 Grand-Goa
ˆ
ve, P.P. 18.42971 -72.74988 1.18 25.0 3-Feb-2010 20:34 WL, EW
3 Grand-Goa
ˆ
ve, P.P. 18.42825 -72.75294 3.10 13.4 3-Feb-2010 20:50 RD, BO
4 Grand-Goa
ˆ
ve, P.P. 18.42801 -72.75333 3.03 30.9 3-Feb-2010 21:03 MI, EW
5 Grand-Goa
ˆ
ve, P.P. 18.43116 -72.76031 1.69 52.3 3-Feb-2010 21:43 WL, EW
6 Grand-Goa
ˆ
ve, P.P. 18.43355 -72.76340 2.66 22.6 3-Feb-2010 22:09 MI, EW
7 Grand-Goa
ˆ
ve, P.P. 18.43342 -72.76351 1.36 41.4 3-Feb-2010 22:13 WL, EW
8 Grand-Goa
ˆ
ve 18.43343 -72.76892 1.28 15.1 6-Feb-2010 20:59 WL, EW
9 Petit-Goa
ˆ
ve 18.42491 -72.87511 0.50 0.0 6-Feb-2010 19:05 EW
10 Le
´
oga
ˆ
ne 18.50939 -72.65493 1.38 17.6 6-Feb-2010 22:05 WL, EW
11 Le
´
oga
ˆ
ne 18.52472 -72.65009 0.61 8.1 6-Feb-2010 23:01 WL, EW
12 Le
´
oga
ˆ
ne 18.52458 -72.65193 0.60 7.8 6-Feb-2010 23:09 WL, EW
13 Luly 18.83597 -72.57781 N.W. 0.0 7-Feb-2010 17:01 EW
14 Luly 18.88849 -72.62262 N.W. 0.0 7-Feb-2010 17:31 EW
15 Pedernales, D.R. 18.02799 -71.74437 1.27 7.1 4-Feb-2010 19:25 EW
16 Anse-a
`
-Pitres 18.03825 -71.76272 2.08 10.4 5-Feb-2010 13:51 EW
17 Belle-Anse 18.23713 -72.05963 1.15 3.2 5-Feb-2010 20:14 EW
18 Cayes-de-Jacmel 18.23390 -72.38004 1.30 19.2 6-Feb-2010 13:03 EW
19 Jacmel 18.23234 -
72.53714 2.44 24.5 6-Feb-2010 14:08 RD, EW
20 Jacmel 18.23269 -72.53706 1.44 63.5 6-Feb-2010 14:00 WL, EW
21 Jacmel 18.23146 -72.53503 3.21 13.4 6-Feb-2010 14:40 MI, EW
Codes to nature of measurements: h flow depth above terrain, z terrain elevation, z ? h flow depth above sea level at tsunami arrival time,
R runup, I inundation; codes to nature of watermarks: BO boat, EW eyewitness, MI mudline inside, RD rafted debris, WL wrack line;
Abbreviations: D.R. Dominican Republic, N.W. negative wave (draw down only), P.P. Petit Paradis
1466 H. M. Fritz et al. Pure Appl. Geophys.
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Gulf of Gona
ˆ
ve. Coastal uplift was observed at
Le
´
oga
ˆ
ne located 30 km west of Port-au-Prince and
subsidence at Petit Goa
ˆ
ve located 10 km west of Grand
Goa
ˆ
ve (Fig. 4e–g). Numerous non-tsunamigenic sites
with liquefaction and lateral spreading were identified
(G
REEN et al., 2011;OLSON et al., 2011). A fast-tide like
oscillation with submeter tsunami height was reported
by eyewitnesses at Luly located 50 km north of Grand-
Goa
ˆ
ve (Fig. 4h).
4. Tsunami Observations on the South Coast
of Hispaniola in Haiti and the Dominican
Republic
Tsunami and earthquake observations were docu-
mented along more than 100 km of Hispaniola’s south
coast between Pedernales, Dominican Republic and
Jacmel, Haiti (Fig. 5). The tsunami impact peaked
with maximum tsunami heights exceeding 3 m at
Jacmel on Haiti’s south coast and tsunami runup of
more than 1 m was still observed at Pedernales in the
Dominican Republic. Jacmel, which is near the center
of the south coast, represents an unfortunate example
of a village and harbor located for protection from
storm waves but remains vulnerable to tsunami waves
with runup doubling from the entrance to the head of
the bay. Inundation and tsunami damage were limited
to \100 m inland at Jacmel. The 12 January 2010
earthquake itself caused heavy damage and several
hundred fatalities at Jacmel. Along Hispaniola’s south
coast, eyewitnesses reported one to four main waves
usually with an initial recession, which could corre-
spond to a leading depression N-wave of T
ADEPALLI
and SYNOLAKIS (1994). At most locations on His-
paniola’s south coast, the first wave arrived within
15 min of the earthquake and wave period estimates
range from 5 to 10 min, which is in stark contrast to
the sub-minute wave period observed locally at Petit
Paradis. The fishermen at Pedernales gathered on the
board-walk and recorded the tsunami with cell-phone
videos. The people of Haiti and the Dominican
Republic exhibited a complete lack of tsunami
awareness despite the 1946 Dominican Republic tsu-
nami at Hispaniola’s northeast coast. In sharp
contrast, Sri Lankan UN soldiers on duty at Jacmel
self-evacuated given the memory of the 2004 Indian
Ocean tsunami (L
IU et al., 2005).
5. Numerical Modeling
To simulate the measured tsunami runup, we used
the tsunami inundation model MOST (T
ITOV and
G
ONZALEZ, 1997;TITOV and SYNOLAKIS, 1998). MOST
is a model suite using nonlinear shallow water
equations with telescoped grids to compute tsunami
wave dynamics in its generation, propagation and
Figure 3
Coastal landslide at Petit Paradis with measured tsunami heights along the Bay of Grand Goa
ˆ
ve (pre- and post-earthquake images of coastline)
Vol. 170, (2013) Twin Tsunamis Triggered by the 12 January 2010 Haiti Earthquake 1467
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inundation. The MOST model has been extensively
tested against a number of laboratory experiments
and benchmarks, and was successfully used for sim-
ulations of many historical tsunami events (S
YNOLAKIS
et al., 2008;TANG et al., 2009, 2012;TITOV, 2009;
U
SLU et al., 2011;WEI et al., 2008, 2012). MOST is a
standard tsunami inundation model used in the
NOAA tsunami forecast system to provide modeling
Figure 4
Gulf of Gona
ˆ
ve survey: a, b landslide scarp with tree located 70 m offshore; c tsunami damaged residential house with watermarks and flow
depth measurement; d fishing boat washed ashore and through fence by tsunami waves; e, f subsidence at Petit Goa
ˆ
ve; g coastal uplift with
mangroves at Le
´
oga
ˆ
ne; h eyewitness interview at Luly
1468 H. M. Fritz et al. Pure Appl. Geophys.
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assistance to Tsunami Warning Centers for their
forecasting operations. NGDC has developed a
9-arcsec bathymetry grid that contains no topographic
elevation for Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea. This
grid, however, has relatively sparse coverage in the
Caribbean and may not contain accurate bathymetric
information, especially in the coastal area of north-
western Caribbean Sea (N
ATIONAL GEOPHYSICAL DATA
Figure 5
Haiti south coast survey: Port of Jacmel during (a) tsunami draw down on 12 January 2010 and (b) on normal day; c tsunami flooding of the
road next to the UN barracks at Jacmel; d rapid surveying of tsunami height at the flooded UN barracks with a laser range finder; e earthquake
damage at Jacmel; f deforestation for charcoal in the mountains along Haiti’s south coast; g landslide along ‘‘Route Nationale 102’’ (the main
road connecting Haiti and the Dominican Republic); h eyewitness interview at Anse-a
`
-Pitres across the border from Pedernales; (a–c) photo
credit: Captain Geethika of the Sri Lankan UN blue helmets
Vol. 170, (2013) Twin Tsunamis Triggered by the 12 January 2010 Haiti Earthquake 1469
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Figure 6
a Computed maximum tsunami amplitude in Haiti vicinity based on the NEIC source model. Tsunami recordings and model comparison of
(b) wave amplitude and (c) spectrum at DART buoy 42,407 about 600 km southeast of the earthquake source. Tsunami recordings and model
comparison of (d) wave amplitude and (e) spectrum at the Santo Domingo tide gauge located 300 km east of the earthquake source
1470 H. M. Fritz et al. Pure Appl. Geophys.
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CENTER, 2005). This dataset was combined with the
Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) 90 m
elevation to generate all the grids for tsunami inun-
dation modeling. Models were developed here to
study the tsunami impact at Santo Domingo and
Pedernales in Dominican Republic and Jacmel in
Haiti. While sharing a common outmost grid of 1
arcmin (*1.85 km) resolution to account for the
tsunami propagation in northwestern Caribbean Sea,
these models employ an 18-arcsec (*550 m) grid to
cover Haiti and western Dominican Republic
(Figs. 7, 8 insets), and a local 3-arcsec (*90 m) grid
(Figs. 7, 8) to compute the tsunami inundation.
The computed tsunami waves based on different
source models were compared with deep-ocean
observations in the Caribbean, a coastal tide gauge at
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and post-tsu-
nami survey results in Haiti. Figure 6a shows that the
NEIC source model underestimated the tsunami
waves on the south shore of Haiti near Jacmel, where
the post-tsunami survey discovered up to 3 m tsu-
nami height in Jacmel and up to 2 m runup in
southeastern Haiti at the border with the Dominican
Republic (Fig. 2). The ground shaking caused by the
seismic waves was quickly detected within a couple
of minutes of the earthquake, shown as high-fre-
quency spikes in Fig. 6b, by a DART 42407 about
600 km southeast of the earthquake source. The
computed time series of the NEIC model agrees well
with the arrival time and approximate amplitude
recorded by DART 42407 (Fig. 6b). Spectrum anal-
ysis of the recorded time series at DART 42407,
however, reveals that a dominant wave period was
hardly distinguishable from the background noise,
which probably can be attributed to weak tsunami
signal and low signal-to-noise ratio. The modeled
time series shows the most dominant wave
periods are about between 12 to 24 min (Fig. 6c).
Figure 7
Computed tsunami runup heights at Jacmel from a 3’’ inundation model using the scaled NEIC source model. The black bars in the lower
panel are the computed runup heights along the shoreline
Vol. 170, (2013) Twin Tsunamis Triggered by the 12 January 2010 Haiti Earthquake 1471
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A high-resolution model at Santo Domingo, located
on the south coast of the Dominican Republic and
about 300 km east of the earthquake source, shows
good comparison with the tsunami amplitude recor-
ded by the Santo Domingo tide gauge, 4 cm for the
maximal wave amplitude (Fig. 6d). The spectrum of
the tide gauge records suggests tsunami wave periods
of about 5 to 8 minutes inside Santo Domingo harbor
(Fig. 6e). The model results, however, over-predicted
with wave periods of 12 to 14 min. The difference in
wave period may be an indication that the tsunami
source needs to be further investigated and the pos-
sibility of submarine landslides considered. Different
rupture models proposed in some recent studies
(H
AYES et al., 2010;HORNBACH et al., 2010;CALAIS
et al., 2010) indicated a complex rupture during the
Haiti earthquake that probably includes simultaneous
or near-simultaneous motion on strike-slip and thrust
structures, and landslides. The tsunami modeling tests
with these source models, however, underestimate the
tsunami impact on Haiti’s south shore by an order of
magnitude. The favorable amplitude comparisons and
slightly-over-predicted wave periods in Fig. 6 sug-
gest that the NEIC solution is a workable source
model, but still needs further improvement to reflect
the tsunami footprints observed in both the Gulf of
Gona
ˆ
ve and the south shore of Haiti. N
EWMAN et al.
(2011) discussed a regional rigidity scale factor that
accounts for the discrepancy between tele-seismically
inverted slip and the true regional slip that may be
subdued when traveling through the lower crust.
While keeping a constant M
0
, this scale factor
resulted in a slip weighted 5.6 ± 1.0 across the fault
during the 2010 Mentawai earthquake. Analogously
we found a 4-time scaled model from the NEIC
source (Table 2) well predicts the more than 3 m
tsunami heights observed at Jacmel (Fig. 7). The
computed tsunami wave period is estimated to be
about 6 to 7 min, and fits well with the reported data.
The modeling results at Jacmel indicate a wave
oscillation may have been triggered by the tsunami
wave inside Jacmel Bay lasting for hours, and the
resonance may be one of the reasons responsible for
the tsunami wave period of minutes. The scaled
model also predicted 2 m tsunami runup at Anse-a
`
-
Pitres (Haiti) on the southeast shore of Haiti across
the border from Pedernales in the Dominican
Republic. It’s worth noting that the SRTM 90-m data
was the best-available topography used in this study,
and its vertical topographic uncertainty up to 16 m
may play a role in the underestimation of tsunami
runup in the original NEIC solution.
Figure 8
Computed tsunami runup heights at Anse-a
`
-Pitres (Haiti) and
Pedernales (Dominican Republic) from a 3’’ inundation model
using the scaled NEIC source model. The black bars in the lower
panel are the computed runup heights along the shoreline
Table 2
Source parameters of modeled tsunami
Earthquake parameters
a
Value
Longitude 72.559°W
Latitude 18.423°N
Length 43.0 km
Width 27.0 km
Dip 64°
Rake 25°
Strike 71°
Slip 5.8 m
Depth 10 km
a
Earthquake parameters are adjusted based on NEIC source to
best fit tsunami measurements
1472 H. M. Fritz et al. Pure Appl. Geophys.
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6. Conclusions
The rapid deployment of a survey team to Haiti
after the 12 January 2010 event resulted in the
recovery of important data on the characteristics of
tsunami impact as well as information on coastal land
level changes. The tsunami arrival times recorded by
the DART buoy and the Santo Domingo tide gauge
indicate that the tsunami on Hispaniola’s south shore
was triggered instantly with the earthquake, while the
public attention was mostly focused on the Gulf of
Gona
ˆ
ve and the Bay of Port-au-Prince. The tsunami
flooding inside the Gulf of Gona
ˆ
ve is attributed to a
coastal submarine landslide at Petit Paradis, while the
source of the tsunami on the south shore of His-
paniola remains to be determined. As with most near-
field tsunamis, the waves struck prior to official
warnings reaching coastal residents. The lack of self-
evacuations resulted in three tsunami fatalities and
demonstrated the pivotal importance of community-
based education and awareness programs (S
YNOLAKIS
and BERNARD, 2006).
Acknowledgments
The survey was supported logistically by ONAMET
of the Dominican Republic and UNESCO-IOC. F.M.
was supported by the National Science Foundation
through the NSF NEESR award CMMI-0936603.
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