A4 TUESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2019
NWhen things go wrong, those in power
often promise to make it right. But do
they? In this series, The Times investi-
gates to see if those promises were kept.
ST.-MARTIN, French West Indies —
In the debris that had once been furni-
ture and a roof were the vestiges of a holi-
day home: a cluster of flip-flops, a ro-
mance novel, a child’s ball floating in a
plunge pool’s fetid waters.
On a recent visit, it looked as if an artil-
lery barrage had smashed into this small
bungalow and a dozen or so other nearby
cottages in a similar state of ruin, in what
had been a pleasant vacation compound
on a bluff above the Atlantic Ocean.
This scene of utter destruction in the
aftermath of a Category 5 hurricane was
not in the Abaco Islands or on Grand Ba-
hama, devastated by Dorian last month.
This wasteland was on St. Martin, an is-
land that took a direct hit from Hurricane
Irma on Sept. 6, 2017, and where, two
years later, recovery is still far from com-
plete.
The hurricane caused billions of dol-
lars in damage across the 34-square-mile
island, which is split between the French
territory of St.-Martin, with a population
of about 32,000, and Sint Maarten, a
mostly autonomous country within the
Kingdom of the Netherlands, with a pop-
ulation of about 41,000.
Immediately after the storm blasted
the island, President Emmanuel Macron
of France promised a speedy recovery
for the French side.
“St.-Martin will be reborn; I am com-
mitted,” Mr. Macron vowed. “We will do it
quickly, we will do it well, and we will do it
better.”
But St.-Martin’s slow, if steady, recov-
ery shows just how difficult coming back
from a hurricane can be on a small is-
land, with challenges that go well beyond
just the size of financial aid packages.
In St.-Martin, the toughest, most un-
comfortable questions are less about
who will pay for rebuilding than where
and how to rebuild, or whether to rebuild
at all amid the threat of ever more power-
ful storms.
This has made the debate less an eco-
nomic one and more one about politics,
class, culture and race, often pitting the
local majority-black population against
the French state.
The top French official on the island
says she wants more restrictions on con-
struction in the areas most at risk to fu-
ture storms, in order to protect lives and
the economy.
But many working-class residents
fear they could be forced to abandon
property that has been in their family for
generations. Some suspect a land grab,
in which their waterfront plots will be
taken and sold to wealthy developers.
In a region that has experienced the
awesome forces of Category 5 storms
with terrifying frequency in recent
years, the story playing out on St. Martin
is likely to be repeated on many other Ca-
ribbean islands — and in the United
States, too.
Standing Up, but Wobbly
On the French side of the island, Hurri-
cane Irma damaged about 95 percent of
the buildings, including the home of
Bernadette Carty.
Ms. Carty had lived all her 65 years on
the waterfront, and she felt it was safe to
ignore the evacuation orders that pre-
ceded Irma’s landfall. After all, at least
seven generations of her family had sur-
vived numerous hurricanes on this same
patch of land, and she figured this time
would be no different.
But Irma was among the most power-
ful storms ever to hit the island, and a
prime example of how climate change
has made hurricanes more destructive.
As Irma rumbled ashore, Ms. Carty,
her daughter and two grandchildren
dived for cover under a mattress and
rode out the storm.
When Irma had finally moved on, the
family emerged from their hideaway to
discover that the storm surge and wind
had gouged holes in two sides of the
house and had swept away Ms. Carty’s
sister from her home next door. She was
one of 11 people who died on the French
side of the island, according to the local
authorities. Two died on the Dutch side,
according to the prime minister’s office.
Ms. Carty has been living in a tempo-
rary apartment ever since and hopes to
get permission to rebuild her house.
“This hurricane is the devil,” she said.
The storm devastated the island’s
main airport, blocked its ports and effec-
tively shut down the essential tourism in-
dustry for months.
The French government’s promise to
deliver substantial help was not an
empty one.
It allocated more than $500 million in
aid and subsidies in the first six months
after the storm to the recovery and re-
construction of St.-Martin and the small-
er, nearby French island of St.-
Barthélemy, according to Sylvie Feucher,
the French state’s top representative
based in the two territories.
Considering the dire shape St.-Martin
was in right after the storm, with its in-
frastructure flattened, the fact that much
of the territory is back on its feet con-
firms the aid has made a difference.
Hotels and restaurants have re-
opened, and tourists are again lounging
on its beaches.
But on a visit to the island in late Au-
gust, remaining damage was visible all
around. Buildings without roofs. Busi-
nesses still shuttered. The half-sunken
hulls of storm-scuttled ships.
While Irma battered the island for just
a matter of hours, Ms. Feucher predicted
that it could take up to three more years
for the territory to fully recover.Social, and Racial, Fault LinesHurricane Irma made clear that natu-
ral disasters not only obliterate struc-
tures and lives; they can also expose
deep socioeconomic fault lines. In St.-
Martin, a long simmering discontent —
loaded with racial and class tension — is
on the verge of boiling over.
Ms. Feucher, the deputy prefect for St.-
Martin, is convinced that some areas are
just too dangerously exposed to the
power of the most severe storms to be
safely inhabitable. And she is trying to
convince the population of that, too.
The focus of her mission, backed by
Paris, is a push for more severe restric-
tions on construction and land use in the
areas at greatest risk of damage during
major storms, like that bluff with the pul-
verized cottages.
But the campaign has become a flash
point in an increasingly contentious rela-
tionship between the French govern-
ment and a local population bristling
against French bureaucracy and over-
seas control.
Several of the flood-prone coastal
neighborhoods of greatest concern to
Ms. Feucher have large low-income pop-
ulations, and many residents suspect
that the French government is waging a
veiled campaign to drive poor, black resi-
dents off their land through condemna-tion so it can be sold to developers.
Cédrick André, a community activist
in Sandy Ground, one of the high-risk
neighborhoods, views the matter as
nothing less than an existential struggle
for St.-Martin’s working-class people.
“They want to change everything: the
way we live, the way we speak, the way
we sex, the way we eat,” said Mr. André,- “They want to change who we are.”
“They are not attacking the people
who have their pocket full and can de-
fend themselves,” he added. “They are
attacking people without their pocket
full.”
Sandy Ground — bracketed by a bay
on one side and a lagoon on the other —
was first settled by squatters decades
ago, many of them black immigrants
from other Caribbean islands.
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 un-
paved lanes.
“Many of us living by the sea, we know
the risk,” said Marie Abner, 48, who has
lived in the neighborhood since she im-
migrated from Haiti as a child. “If any-
thing happen, we leave the home. Then
we come back.”
The French government has set up a
fund to buy out property owners living in
the riskiest flood zones, but Ms. Feucher
insists that nobody will be forced to sell.
Still, residents of Sandy Ground, and
other neighborhoods with significant
working-class populations, like Grand
Case and Quartier d’Orléans, are unas-
suaged and angry.
Daniel Gibbs, president of the local
government in St.-Martin, has de-
manded that the French state give the
community more time to study the issue.
On a recent evening, Jah Bash, a
Rastafarian farmer, said that the popula-
tion’s patience with an overbearing
French state was wearing thin.
“For me, it’s a conspiracy to take over
the island,” said Mr. Bash, whose family
has lived in Sandy Ground for five gener-
ations. “It’s about wealth.”
Protests against the plan could turn vi-
olent, Mr. Bash warned. “The only way to
get your attention is to do something to
you that you fear,” he said. “The country
will burn easily.”A Tough Task, Made Much HarderHurricane recovery is hard anywhere.
And that’s particularly true on Caribbe-
an islands like St. Martin because of a
unique combination of factors.
As with many places in the Caribbean,
the economy is over-reliant on a single
industry — tourism — for jobs and tax
revenue. When hotels are wrecked by a
storm, business dries up, unemployment
soars and government coffers suffer.
Geographic isolation makes every-
thing more expensive. Building ma-
terials need to be brought in by ship or
plane, increasing costs. The elevated de-
mand for qualified workers in a small la-
bor pool ratchets up wages.
Recovery is also hamstrung by the fact
that few are left untouched by a severe
disaster: The officials responsible for
leading the recovery are themselves
sometimes fighting to get on their feet.
Local governments often lack the re-sources to manage the task of hurricane
recovery alone.
Prime Minister Leona Romeo-Marlin
of Sint Maarten said her government had
insufficient fiscal, legal and environmen-
tal personnel to help manage those as-
pects of recovery after Irma.
“The hurricane really exposed those
weak areas that we have as a govern-
ment,” she said.Sibling Rivalry, on a Split IslandThe island that St.-Martin and Sint
Maarten occupy was divided between
the French and the Dutch in the 17th cen-
tury. As with two competitive siblings
close in age, just about everything that
happens on one side demands compari-
son with the other.
Hurricane recovery has been no differ-
ent, revealing that distinctions in culture
and governance have had a significant
bearing on progress during the past two
years.
The consensus view on both sides of
the island is that the Dutch half has re-
covered more quickly. A higher percent-
age of hotel rooms on the Dutch side, for
example, are open again for business.
The French state runs a famously la-
borious bureaucracy that residents say
has slowed the rebuilding process.
“We have norms and rules and regula-
tions on the French side,” said Angèle
Dormoy, the president of St.-Martin’s
Chamber of Commerce. “Everything is
controlled and re-controlled, three or
four times.”
In contrast, Sint Maarten has devel-
oped a more laissez-faire culture, helping
accelerate the rebuilding process.
While the French state may seem
overbearing to some in St.-Martin, its
people, who are French citizens, are enti-
tled to all the protections of France’s gen-
erous social net. But that state largess
may have undermined private initiative
during this reconstruction period.
“That’s the strength and weakness of
France,” Ms. Feucher said. “We give a lot
of attention to the population, and it can
prevent people from developing a sense
of responsibility in terms of taking care
of themselves.”
On the Dutch side, much of the rebuild-
ing has been driven by private funds,
particularly from sources associated
with tourism, which dwarfs the French-
side tourism sector.
But the differences have also left some
on the Dutch side wondering whether in
their haste to rebuild, and in their com-
paratively looser regulatory envi-
ronment, the rebuilding did not happen
with enough thought given to withstand-
ing future storms.
On the French side, some believe their
patience will pay off with a more resilient
island, better able to withstand the ef-
fects of the Atlantic’s warming waters.
Ms. Feucher said she was trying to get
the population to take the long view: that
getting the rebuilding right, even if it
takes time, could save lives in the next
big storm.
But Ms. Feucher conceded that per-
suading people to accept new regula-
tions was no easy task.
“Changing mentalities is always diffi-
cult,” she said.
THE TAKEAWAYAs storms become more
destructive, hurricane recovery is as
much about rethinking as it is rebuilding.Battling Over Where, or Whether, to Rebuild After Storms
The St.-Martin homes of Mary Ab-
ner, above, and others, far left, were
severely damaged by Hurricane Irma
in 2017. Philipsburg, near left, in
Dutch Sint Maarten, has recovered
more quickly than French St.-Mar-
tin, below, where damage remains.PHOTOGRAPHS BY MEGHAN DHALIWAL FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESBy KIRK SEMPLEPROMISES MADE ST. MARTIN