Earthquake survivors built a new city in Haiti

Earthquake survivors built a new city in Haiti. Today’s Image of the Day from NASA Earth Observatory features Haiti, where displaced survivors of a 2010 earthquake built a new city called Canaan.

In the year after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake destroyed parts of Port-au-Prince, the capital city’s population dropped by about half a million people.

Around 200,000 earthquake victims moved a few miles to the northeast and developed what is now Haiti’s third largest city, Canaan. Earthquake survivors built a new city in Haiti

The island was originally inhabited by the indigenous Taíno people, who migrated from South America. The first Europeans arrived on 5 December 1492 during the first voyage of Christopher Columbus, who initially believed he had found India or China. Columbus subsequently founded the first European settlement in the Americas, La Navidad, on what is now the northeastern coast of Haiti. The island was claimed by Spain and named La Española, forming part of the Spanish Empire until the early 17th century. However, competing claims and settlements by the French led to the western portion of the island being ceded to France in 1697, which was subsequently named Saint-Domingue. French colonists established lucrative sugarcane plantations, worked by vast numbers of slaves brought from Africa, which made the colony one of the richest in the world.

—

By Chrissy Sexton, Earth.com Staff Writer

Image Credit: NASA