Why Haiti Is a 'Hub of Natural Disaster'

Haiti has begun a three-day period of national mourning for the victims of Hurricane Matthew, which barreled through the desperately impoverished Caribbean nation as a Category 4 storm last week, packing winds that roared at 145 miles per hour and dumping at least 25 inches of rain. The enormous scale of the damage is still being revealed, but the country’s interior minister says almost 900 have been killed and perhaps 350,000 need aid, according to the BBC. Tens of thousands of homes and buildings in the nation’s southwest have been destroyed. Meanwhile, fears of deadly cholera have grown, with Reuters reporting 13 deaths so far from disease outbreaks in the wake of the storm.*

It’s a tragically familiar story for Haiti, which was devastated by a 7.0 magnitude earthquake in 2010 and the floods that followed it in 2011. And now, with Hurricane Matthew, the cycle of destruction and reconstruction continues, leaving urban Haitians at particular risk.