A catastrophic earthquake devastates Haiti

At 4:53 p.m. local time on January 12, 2010, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake ruptured a fault just 16 miles (25 km) west of Port-au-Prince, near the town of Léogâne. Because the densely populated Haitian capital sat almost atop the epicenter, and so much construction was unreinforced, the shaking was catastrophic.

Government buildings, hospitals, schools, and the National Palace collapsed within seconds. Roughly three million people, nearly a third of the country, were affected. Death-toll estimates vary widely amid the chaos of mass burials; reliable surveys point to around 158,000 killed, while Haitian officials cited figures exceeding 220,000.

It remains among the deadliest natural disasters of the 21st century.

The disaster triggered one of the largest humanitarian responses in modern history. Reconstruction proved slow and uneven, and a cholera epidemic later compounded the toll, leaving scars that Haiti was still working to overcome years afterward.