When Hurricane Matthew slammed into Haiti in October, the massive storm brought torrential rains and 145-mile-per-hour winds that destroyed almost everything in its path.
In the town of Les Cayes, residents watched as a man was blown off a ledge into rushing water and then killed by a falling wall. In Port-Salut, wind ripped the roof off Destine Rosevald’s home. Before he could get two of his children to safety, the house crumpled on top of them.
By the time the hurricane subsided, the country was ravaged. In Lacadonie, so few structures were left standing that hundreds of people were living in caves. The smell of death lingered over everything.
“Our country has collapsed,” said one boy. “We cannot go to school, and it will be years before we can rebuild our homes to what they once were.”
All told, Haiti’s strongest storm in a decade killed more than 1,000 people and left 175,000 homeless. Some 1.4 million Haitians—about 13 percent of the population—required assistance with food, shelter, and medical care.
This is an all-too-familiar scene in Haiti, which never seems to recover from one disaster before it’s hit by another. In 2010, a devastating earthquake killed 316,000 Haitians and displaced 1.5 million. Six years later, Hurricane Matthew is yet another setback for one of the most long-suffering nations on Earth.