Did anyone else feel a quake besides Haiti, even if not as grand? Or, did the quake wavefront quickly get absorbed and dampen out?
Only felt, with no damage in Cuba and the Dominican Republic.
Quakes are weird events. They all aren’t the same. It’s as if this one was a rifle shot at Port-Au-Prince, not a shotgun blast into the Caribbean (or Haiti). Probably, if the same quake had it’s epicenter in Cap Haitian the death toll in Port-Au-Prince would have been minimal. This was almost the worst imaginable scenario.
Jinx - Look around this site a bit Earthquakes | U.S. Geological Survey
Earthquakes are generally point events. The severity of shakling drops off rapidly with distance. Even a whopper is imperceptable to most humans & their structures a couple hundred miles away.
A Doper posted in another thread that he was in Haiti but halfway across the island when it happened and had no idea until the news reports started coming in. That is 100% typical
Haiti had the bad luck to have A) a crappily-built city, and B) the earthquake happen (for all practical purpioses) right downtown.