1946 was the last recorded earthquake on Haiti. As a result no one was prepared for such devastation on 12th January 2010. Because in most people's lifetime they have never known or experienced an earthquake. This was why so many people perished, so many buildings collapsed and why the intense destruction.

The devastation was not only attributed to the lack of knowledge about earthquakes occurring on Haiti, but the corruption in building techniques. The understanding is that with every bag of concrete you can produce 20 concrete blocks, over here they push the limit so that each bag will produce 60 concrete blocks. Basically, people were building graveyards!

The project manager for Architecture for Humanity, showed me a video clip of one of the concrete blocks being dessicated by an empty plastic coke bottle. The shocking reality of this was without much effort the concrete block turned into sand.

It is also common in Haitian culture to build up a 2nd story when you have more money. They do this without the knowledge of force, weight and foundations. Combined with the weak concrete blocks and the lack of structural engineering (wrong steel reinforcements) the buildings become top heavy.

As a result of this, the force and weight from the new 2nd level is stretched beyond the capacity of the first floor and without proper foundations, the building is basically like jenga, ready to topple then flattens like a pancake.

It is unbelievable when I discovered these facts. It is crucial that proper building techniques are taught, to make people aware that they can not save money by not having foundations, to save money because they don't want to buy more bags of concrete but most of all to save money on steel reinforcements because they cost too much.