Geography Unit 1, World at Risk Case Study 3 - Hurricane Jeanne, Haiti, 2004

In September 2004 more than 3 000 Haitians died in the flooding that followed Hurricane Jeanne even though it was only category 3 in strength. Seven months earlier the country's elected president had been deposed in a US-backed coup and armed uprising that left 300 dead.A quarter of a million Haitians were left homeless and starving by the hurricane. Efforts to get food, water, blankets and medicines to them were hampered by remaining floodwater or mudslides blocking the country's main north-south road.Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, called it a 'natural disaster', but this was largely a manmade catastrophe. The same storm killed only 20 people in the Dominican Republic, which still has its forests. Haiti was once a lush tropical paradise, but poverty has forced Haitians to chop down tens of thousands of trees a year to make charcoal as their only affordable fuel. With no trees and no topsoil, there was nothing to stop rainwater from flooding down to low-lying areas.In the 1950s, 25% of Haiti was covered in thick verdant forest. Now, it is less than 2%. The country could be desert by the end of the decade unless the government takes reforestation seriously. There is a reforestation plan, but for every tree planted in recent years, seven were chopped down.Much of the blame must go to the Duvalier family that ruled Haiti from the 1950s to the 1980s. Backed by successive US governments as a stabilising, anti-Communist influence within 160 km of Cuba, the Duvaliers created a society in which the wealthy lived in luxury and the poor had to chop down trees to survive.

Hurricane Jeanne, Haiti, 2004