Haiti: 12 years after the 2010 earthquake, memory and prevention

Audio 19:30

A Haitian seated among the rubble, January 15, 2010. Reuters / Jorge Silva

By: Mikaël Ponge Follow |

Mikaël Ponge Follow

2 min

Haiti and the world today remember the terrible earthquake of January 12, 2010, 12 years ago, to the day.

A magnitude 7 earthquake on the Richter scale completely devastated the Port-au-Prince region and hit the coastal town of Jacmel, in the Sud-Ouest department, hard, killing more than 250,000 people and countless casualties.

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Over 250,000 dead, over 300,000 injured, and a million and a half Haitians who found themselves homeless overnight. The disaster left a gaping wound of which many have retained an intact memory, 12 years later. Haiti is a seismic island. The earth reminded us of this again last summer (2021), when on August 14, 2021, an earthquake measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale devastated three departments on the country's southern peninsula. The toll is lower than in 2010 (2,246 deaths, 12,763 injured and 329 missing), but the loss of human life is still far too high. For 12 years, Haitian scientists have yet endowed the country with a building code so that in particular key buildings such as schools,but also hospitals and official buildings are built according to earthquake-resistant standards. But most of the time, this code is not respected and its application not controlled by the town halls. In Cap Haitien, the country's second city, specialists fear an even worse disaster in the short or medium term. The emphasis is therefore on prevention among the youngest. It is a signed file

Stefanie Schüler.

Joe Biden's risky bet

He plays fat Joe Biden.

Faced with the proliferation of laws to try to restrict access to the right to vote for minorities, especially African-Americans, in several conservative states, the president would like to have a federal law passed in the Senate guaranteeing this access to the vote.

The Republicans are blocking.

So yesterday (January 11, 2022), on the occasion of his trip to Atlanta, Georgia, cradle of civil rights, he defended the idea of ​​a change in parliamentary rules to have his texts adopted, and therefore defend the access to vote.

According to the

New York Times,

"Joe Biden has often defended complex Senate procedures, even when Republicans have used them to block his action": "to agree to change them would have been to admit that the principles he cherished had withered away, in a city today" she was consumed by partisan resentment.

This Tuesday, he resigned himself to it ”.

Argentina: giant blackout in Buenos Aires

Argentina is currently experiencing an extreme heat wave with temperatures above 40 ° Celsius, across much of the country.

Among the undesirable consequences: power cuts due to the widespread use of air conditioners.

Yesterday (January 11, 2022) much of Greater Buenos Aires was affected, leaving some 700,000 people without power for several hours.

Report on site by

Théo Conscience.

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