After a Caribbean Hurricane, the Battle Is Where, or Even Whether, to Rebuild

Another problem with climate change - there are areas that cannot be rebuilt as they are prone to be demolished again in the next disaster. I feel for these people who lost everything and now fear the government is trying to steal their homes/land only to sell it to wealthy developers. It is ignoring the simple fact that their land is inhabitable by anyone. Hurricanes don't care if you are rich or poor or somewhere in between. This situation in Saint Martin is a preview of what builders, residents, the State and Federal government will deal with in places like South Florida sometime in the not-so-distant future.

Currently, the most evil element of climate change is the fact that you may not be able to go back home again.

Aren't there houses damaged during Sandy still awaiting reconstruction? Puerto Rico is still pretty much a mess as well. The US isn't exactly doing a great job recovering from storms either. As a comment - given the susceptibility of housing on low lying islands to hurricanes why aren't buildings in these places constructed on stilts like buildings in places like the Outer Banks?

After a disaster, it's the natural response for the government to say that they will "rebuild" or "overcome" despite the fact that the recovery will be severely delayed by complications or it will be done in a fashion that does not mitigate against further disasters. If they were to be honest about the difficulties and/or their lack of care towards rebuilding, it would leave a very bad mark on them as their honesty would be subject to intense worldwide scrutiny. Therefore, they make empty promises so that the true nature of the rebuilding process is revealed after mass public attention from the issue fades.

Another issue is where you put the waste from the damage. It is an island, with defined limits. We visited in 2018 and our car rental was still missing 10 cars. Cars were rolled up into balls. Where do you put them?

The entire Caribbean basin is a target for hurricanes, anything built there will be wiped out on a periodic basis. The same goes for parts of the US, Florida is flat for a reason, every couple of decades a monster storm comes along and scrapes it clean. Some of our coastal cities are in a similar situation. We need to have a serious debate about these locations, it is worth dumping more money into a city that is regularly flooded and damaged? Would we be better off to relocate?

Sandy Ground took a terrible beating during Irma and days after the destruction few could describe the aftermath. The very fact that Sandy Ground is still a vibrant community (today) having endure both the famous hurricanes (Luis 1995 and Irma 2017) is a testament to the village spirit bounded by water front and back. Comparison of the Dutch side VS the French villages are difficult and misleading notwithstanding the multicultural nature of both sides. The twin nations are a model of cooperation and people from the four corners of earth live on this parcel of dual territory. However, throughout both sides the damage is omnipresent and working families struggle with daily life and fix what they can over time.

Yes, there will be more powerful hurricane to come ahead , why rebuilt ? Mother Nature is sending a powerful message . No need to rebuilt, unless it’s a hurricane / earthquake resistant ! Sorry for the people from this island , but you hardly are the only one. Sad but, climate change is coming OR it’s already here .

How much reconstruction money went in politicians' pockets?

I try to ask people, how do you envision the future of your community or nation. Normally people have no answer. They refuse to consider how the policy decisions they support today will effect future quality of life. St Martins is one of the most densely populated places in the world but unlike India or Bangladesh it does not have the water resources resulting from the Andes and the monsoon rains. Cédrick André say, “They want to change everything: the way we live, the way we speak, the way we sex, the way we eat,” said Mr. André, 42. “They want to change who we are.” If they do not change, their children will die and they will live in abject poverty. Luckly, they still have time to choose a path but first they would need to have a discussion about population growth, water resources, building codes and economic development. This article seems to ignore most of that discussion.

Is this a new thing: putting a one-sentence takeaway at the end of an article to help readers who don't have the capability to process larger slices of information?

Suggestion: Macron should use his gov't money to buy out at top dollar,the lower 80% economic land owners. They then can relocate to France or other French speaking countries with solid land under their feet. Leave the island to the top 20% to spend their own money to rebuild as gated communities with no entitlement to any aid when the next hurricane comes or the sea swallows their homes. Oh and they will have to clean their own toilets and weed their own gardens. Tough love for the wealthy

Same as was done in New Orleans!

It sounds like the very much destroyed area of Sandy Ground was allowed to be build basically without much regulations: "The authorities turned a blind eye to the settlement, allowing it to grow, and now thousands of people live along the neighborhood’s narrow streets and unpaved lanes." Now the authorities need to enforce rules of building sturdy, hurricane-proof buildings. That's were the French government aid for the poorer population should go and the local activists should help their people to accept these standards of rebuilding. Also, those who would like to get out of the danger zone should accept offers to find homes or new-build on safer grounds. The class-warfare rhetoric shows resentment but not much willingness to come up with reasonable and practical/pragmatic solutions. Inflammatory rhetoric and thinking is not always the best way to help the poor. I have been to Grand Case decades ago, vacation homes right near the beach. Met very lovely "indigenous" people living a bit further inland. Their kindness and hospitality and life spirit impressed me no end. I hope Irma did not destroy their homes. Grand Case is a lovely area. I believe it suffered some damage, but not as bad as the Sandy Ground area.

good article. The point is St.Martin/St. Maarten is essentially a tourist economy, and forbidding to re-build (with better standards) in low areas on the french side would simply leave coastal areas littered with ruins, rather than sea side restaurants (Grande Case). Tourists, whose planes or cruise ships already arrive on the dutch side, would just stay there, and take the occasional trip to the french side.. to see the ruins left by hurricane. French restaurants are moving to the dutch side already. M. Macron would be highly disappointed with the result, if he comes back. In St. Barth, also french territory, but outside the EU and with larger autonomy, was re-built in six months, essentially with private money. In the caribbean, sometimes the locals know better how to manage things, rather than the bureaucratic heirs of the former colonial powers.

I often wonder if regular folk will start living in disposable yurts while concrete bunker government buildings will serve as refuge during increasing attacks by Mother Nature provoked by carbon drunkeness? Climate change hits those with the fewest resources first and hardest, and the neoliberal ethos is to extract profit on every spin.

A great natural experiment - free market capitalism vs the heavy hand of government. With a good measure of class struggle thrown in. May the best approach succeed.

Its amazing how rebuilding is just the same way over and over. In Puerto Rico they are restringing power lines when they should be constructing solar stations everywhere to spread out the risk. Solar power to a Caribbean Island that sees a great deal of sunshine makes the most sense. Similarly set up cell towers and provide low cost cell phones and plans instead of land lines.

I would like to see a comparison of rebuilding progress in St. Martin and St. Barth's where the worlds most wealthy vacation. I would lay odds that St. Barth's was rebuilt within months or at least before the next high season. Those mega yachts have to go somewhere.

There is nothing wrong with buying land from people who live in low-lying areas as long as this land will be set aside in perpetuity to provide a buffer. In no case should this land be used to build hotels, etc. Originally New Orleans planned on not having the Ninth Ward rebuilt but then yielded to public pressure. If we don't take hurricanes seriously and prepare properly, we'll pay a heavy price.

There is a bigger question at play here and one never addressed by the media. As ocean levels rise what will become of the populations of the islands of the Caribbean? Most of these islands depend heavily on tourism and most tourist facilities are located on beaches that by 2050 may no longer exist. Some very low lying islands, like Abaco may be under water during high tide and even a category one storm. For the French side of St. Martin immigration to France may be an option. But for most of the independent island countries there seem few options short of massive UN aid. A case can be made that the wealthy nations of the north that are responsible for climate disruption should bear the costs. But given their own coastal degradation that's unlikely. We know that climate disruption will create climate refugees. And some of them will surely come from the Caribbean. We need to sort these issues out now, not when thousands are clustered on high ground as their island paradise washes away.

The picture says it all. Stuffing ever more people into the same area causes us to build basically straight to the edge of the ocean. This causes any natural disaster to be much worse than if we had fewer people and could preserve the area as a buffer zone. Our own coasts are great examples of this. More and more people crowding into the same area. There is no problem we face, from climate change, to loss of species that can't be made much worse by adding the over 80 million extra humans we strain the environment with every year. Willfully ignoring this won't make it go away.

Rebuild using shipping container housing. There’s an excess of shipping containers Worldwide, earthquake resistant, prefab construction and creative high rise especially in Southeast Asia.

Me and my family have been passing through the island for over 40 years. The question is why have we never stayed there and flew to nearby islands... St/Sint Maarten has and will always be a mess. You have hotels everywhere, casinos, cruise ships, and then in the middle a major airport. Princess Julian airport was destroyed but they did nothing to protect the building and when the next storm came it flooded the interior further destroying the building. I passed through there in July and was shocked at how little had been done. You could see the main check in area still in complete ruin. Honestly it is sad as the population do love their island and it does have a unique culture but Irma was too much.

These islands will find the water level rising far above their beaches in the coming decades. Building anything new at ground level is a waste of resources, as these structures will be flooded and ruined again. Even building on pilings only pushes the inevitable a bit further into the future.

You simply cannot rebuild with a 2x4 mindset, you have to rebuild with a hurricane code, otherwise this tragedy will happen again.

Why do we presume racism when a central government is in conflict with a local government or local residents? We have a simular situation in Houston, yet we recognize that tough decisions must be made often to the short term detriment of rich, poor and middle class. Rebuilding to resilient standards means that some areas are off limits and must be converted to non-residential use.

What the article doesn't say is how much political turmoil the reconstruction efforts created on the Dutch side. The government fell shortly after the hurricane, and it was almost impossible to organize elections because of the chaos. The influx of money for the reconstruction created vast new opportunities for corruption, which is endemic on the island. The Dutch government turned over responsibility for disbursing the funds to the Word Bank, to avoid direct conflicts with the local authorities, which now are chafing at the requirements for proper planning that the World Bank enforces. The fights over reconstruction money have been at the core of several political crises and changes of government since the hurricane.

All evidence points to increasing intensity of hydrologic events in the Caribbean, making islands there all but uninhabitable within fifty years - and because American industrialization since 1850 is responsible for most of the excess CO2 now in the atmosphere, we're largely to blame. That another president might welcome migrants from Saint-Martin, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and other Caribbean islands to the U.S., before they become casualties, offers hope for regaining some of our moral legitimacy in the eyes of the world.

There is a macro theme herein; individual wants/needs/rights versus the forces of nature. What individuals do does have limits, in this article’s case, the limits imposed by the destructive force of tropical weather. We Caribbean dwellers complain about constant deleterious effects of living by the sea, rust for example. But we also seem unwilling to account for the risks of catastrophic storms. Why? Temporal mismatch. Rust is a constant, but small in daily effect, annoying, not immediately in need of repair, not life threatening. Severe tropical storms are typically far between occurrences, huge immediate consequences that are never good. Yet we quickly forget the pain, and rebuild on the shores often with inadequately designed and constructed buildings. Couple that with the conundrum of the poor. Inexpensive land is an attractant to those with limited resources. It’s cheap land because, for many, it’s undesirable. Often flooding prone, mosquito infested, or simply there’s better locations elsewhere. Do we allow people to build and occupy lands where catastrophic damage is a certainty? And if we do, what is society’s responsibility to continue spending on that unsolvable problem, let alone a potentially fatal problem. This is not solely a Caribbean issue, Houston has allowed the building on lowlands subject to flooding with predictable bad results. The US government provide flood insurance, well below risk adjusted cost, resulting in repeating wipeouts.

One of the most interesting points made here is that the rebuilding on the French side will be done with the idea of being better able to withstand hurricanes from now on. It is easy to see how this could be misunderstood as taking too long to rebuild when islanders see how much more quickly the Dutch side has come back. This failure to see or take the long view is often the reason why enterprises fail that could, with patience, do quite well.

I know Grand Case. It is hard to believe that that area could be made sustainable from Hurricane unless structures were totally rebuilt in stilts. But it is a beautiful little stripe where locals and tourists get along . It would be a shame not to rebuild .

Maybe a big change in lifestyle is needed to live successfully in hurricane areas. One idea would be for everyone to eat most of their meals in restaurants and cafeterias and have storage lockers away from the coast. The areas closest to the coast and most vulnerable could be reserved for tents on private lots with private yards with gardens and patios. If residents had multiple tents with private gardens and patios, it would seem less like a refugee camp and more like Yosemite. Every few years when the tents blow away they could just collect the ripped and bent tents and replace them. If there were grocery stores right there they could buy food for a bbq without keeping a refrigerator. They could have community restrooms like a national park.