More than a decade after a powerful quake devastated Haiti in 2010, the region's complex geology has sent the island into yet another spate of deadly convulsions. An intense magnitude 7.2 earthquake rocked Haiti in the morning hours of August 14, some 46 miles west of the 2010 temblor.

Both quakes are part of Haiti’s long history of shakes, which results from the island nation’s position at the edge of the slowly shifting Caribbean plate. The movements build stresses in a network of fractures that crisscross the island, which occasionally release pent-up stress in ground-rattling earthquakes. While the region's quakes are not the most powerful in the world, their deadliness is magnified by Haiti's abundance of concrete and