- JÉRÉMIE, Haiti — Things had been looking up in Jérémie, a coastal city marooned on the tip of Haiti's southern peninsula. It had recently gotten its first decent road link to the rest of the country, a new highway through the rugged mountains that brought development. Cellphone service had finally begun, enabling farmers and businesses to flourish. The city was racing into the 21st century, dreaming of advanced agriculture and tourism in one of Haiti’s few nature preserves.
Now, Hurricane Matthew has turned back the hands of time.
The rich forests and vegetation are now splinters and a saltwater swamp. Roads are blocked with detritus, trees turned to tinder, homes reduced to mounds of stone and rusted tin shards cleaved from roofs. Jérémie’s ambitious economic plans have been eviscerated.
“Instead of going forward, we have to restart,” said Marie Roselore Auborg, the minister for commerce and industry in the Grand Anse department, where Jérémie is the capital. “This storm leveled all of the potential we had to grow and reboot our economy.”
Hurricane Matthew’s toll in Haiti has been hard to measure: the deaths and injuries, the number of people still stranded, the cases of cholera contracted in the week since winds of 145 miles an hour blew the country back to a tragically familiar state of disaster.
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