Why is it so easy for people in Haiti to die from Natural disasters?

Question

everytime ther's a hurricane and it touches Haiti people always die. Haiti always got the highest death rate it seems to me from those type of things.

i know the country got a lot of problem, but to me it seems impossible to just die from a hurrican like that. they just said that 59 people died from hurricane gustav and 51 of them from haiti.

Answer 1

its the environment

In 1925, when my great grandfather arrived in haiti from France, the country had 60% of the forests and it was a natural wonderland with trees and flowers everywhere

However, over the years American companies, the Army, and many Haitian people themselves have cut down millions of acres of forestland. Now as you know, Haiti is mostly mountains and hills, and it was the trees on these hills that held the soil together on the mountains, and the mountains themselves afforded us natural protection by sheilding us from the wind and rains. Today, with the trees gone, there is nothing to hold the soil in place. So much of the fertile soil that we need to grow food is gone, and whenever there is a serious storm, the winds and rains create devastating mudslides that wash away entire villages.

The survivors end up moving to other parts of the country like Port au Prince et le Cap in search of jobs, but too many have crowded into the cities, and they have created new problems by overburdening our already fragile ecosystem

Everything humans do in ties back to nature, and considering the way we treat this planet, things are gonna come back to bite us in the *** eventually.  

Answer 2

because of their infrastructure, they have low quality housing that when it rains boom, the houses fall on people. also haiti has one of the biggest erosion rates because they cut most of their trees so mudslides tend happen a lot, which is sad really. poorer countries always loose the most people in situations like these.