[25] The Australian government's travel advisory site had previously expressed concerns that Haitian emergency services would be unable to cope in the event of a major disaster,[26] and the country is considered "economically vulnerable" by the Food and Agriculture Organization.

[30] There is no evidence of surface rupture; based on seismological, geological and ground deformation data, it is also thought that the earthquake did not involve significant lateral slip on the main Enriquillo fault.

[32][33] According to estimates from the U.S. Geological Survey, approximately 3.5 million people lived in the area that experienced shaking intensity of MM VII to X,[32] a range that can cause moderate to very heavy damage even to earthquake-resistant structures.

[41] An article published in Haiti's Le Matin newspaper in September 2008 cited comments by geologist Patrick Charles to the effect that there was a high risk of major seismic activity in Port-au-Prince.

[46] According to staff of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which had reached Petit-Goâve for the first time the day before the aftershock, the town was estimated to have lost 15% of its buildings, and was suffering the same shortages of supplies and medical care as the capital.

[71] Most of Port-au-Prince's municipal buildings were destroyed or heavily damaged, including the City Hall, which was described by The Washington Post as, "a skeletal hulk of concrete and stucco, sagging grotesquely to the left.

As of February 2010[update] the water level was low, but engineer Yves Gattereau believed the dam could collapse during the rainy season, which would flood Grand-Goâve 12 km (7.5 mi) downstream.

[81] In the nights following the earthquake, many people in Haiti slept in the streets, on pavements, in their cars, or in makeshift shanty towns either because their houses had been destroyed, or they feared standing structures would not withstand aftershocks.

[84] President Préval and government ministers used police headquarters near the Toussaint L'Ouverture International Airport as their new base of operations, although their effectiveness was extremely limited; several parliamentarians were still trapped in the Presidential Palace, and offices and records had been destroyed.

[99][100] Dr Evan Lyon of Partners in Health, working at the General Hospital in Port-au-Prince, claimed that misinformation and overblown reports of violence had hampered the delivery of aid and medical services.

"[112] Edmond Mulet, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, said, "I do not think we will ever know what the death toll is from this earthquake",[112] while the director of the Haitian Red Cross, Jean-Pierre Guiteau, noted that his organization had not had the time to count bodies, as their focus had been on the treatment of survivors.

[114] At least 85 United Nations personnel working with MINUSTAH were killed,[115] among them the Mission Chief, Hédi Annabi, his deputy, Luiz Carlos da Costa,[20] and police commissioner Douglas Coates.

[116] On 31 May 2011, an unreleased draft report based on a survey commissioned by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) challenged the Haiti earthquake death toll and several damage estimates.

[129] A rescue team sent by the Israel Defense Forces' Home Front Command established a field hospital near the United Nations building in Port-au-Prince with specialised facilities to treat children, the elderly, and women in labor.

[140] The OpenStreetMap community responded to the disaster by greatly improving the level of mapping available for the area using post-earthquake satellite photography provided by GeoEye,[141] and crowdmapping website Ushahidi coordinated messages from multiple sites to assist Haitians still trapped and to keep families of survivors informed.

"[149] However, several organizations were planning an airlift of thousands of orphaned children to South Florida on humanitarian visas, modelled on a similar effort with Cuban refugees in the 1960s named "Pedro Pan".

[169] Aid workers blamed US-controlled airport operations for prioritising the transportation of security troops over rescuers and supplies;[103] evacuation policies favouring citizens of certain nations were also criticised.

[170] The US military acknowledged the non-governmental organizations' complaints concerning flight-operations bias and promised improvement while noting that up to 17 January 600 emergency flights had landed and 50 were diverted; by the first weekend of disaster operations, diversions had been reduced to three on Saturday and two on Sunday.

[183][184][185] They were joined by the French Navy vessel Francis Garnier on 16 January,[186] the same day the hospital ship USNS Comfort and guided-missile cruiser USS Bunker Hill left for Haiti.

[217] On 10 April, due to the potential threat of mudslides and flooding from the upcoming rainy season, the Haitian government began operations to move thousands of refugees to a more secure location north of the capital.

[163] Port-au-Prince, according to an international studies professor at the University of Miami, was ill-equipped before the disaster to sustain the number of people who had migrated there from the countryside over the past ten years to find work.

[253][254] According to a CBS report, US$3.1 billion had been pledged for humanitarian aid and was used to pay for field hospitals, plastic tarps, bandages, and food, plus salaries, transportation and upkeep of relief workers.

[255] In July 2010, CNN returned to Port-au-Prince and reported, "It looks like the quake just happened yesterday", and Imogen Wall, spokeswoman for the United Nations office of humanitarian affairs in Haiti, said that "six months from that time it may still look the same".

[259] In October 2010, Refugees International characterized the aid agencies as dysfunctional and inexperienced saying,"The people of Haiti are still living in a state of emergency, with a humanitarian response that appears paralyzed".

[264]Robert Fox, executive director of Oxfam Canada, said: "The dysfunction has been aided unabated by the way the international community has organized itself, where pledges have been made and they haven't followed through [and] where they come to the table with their own agendas and own priorities.

[265][266]According to a UNICEF report, "Still today more than one million people remain displaced, living in crowded camps where livelihoods, shelter and services are still hardly sufficient for children to stay healthy".

[267] Amnesty International reported that armed men were preying with impunity on girls and women in displacement camps, worsening the trauma of victims who have lost homes, livelihoods and loved ones.

[268] On the first anniversary of the earthquake, Haitian-born Michaëlle Jean, who served as the Governor General of Canada at the time of the disaster, and who became United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Special Envoy for Haiti on 8 November 2010, voiced her anger at the slow rate of aid delivery.

[272] Watchdog groups have criticized the reconstruction process saying that part of the problem is that charities spent a considerable amount of money on "soaring rents, board members' needs, overpriced supplies and imported personnel," the Miami Herald reported.

[286] In 2016, Haiti was struck by Hurricane Matthew which leveled entire communities and caused an upsurge in the ongoing cholera epidemic which was introduced to the island by United Nations peacekeepers.