1954, October 11: (Hurricane Hazel: Port-à-Piment Destroyed, 40 Percent of Coffee Bushes Denuded, Nan Mapou Becomes a Lagoon, and Les Hazels, the Mink Wraps)…

1954, October 11: (Hurricane Hazel: Port-à-Piment Destroyed, 40 Percent of Coffee Bushes Denuded, Nan Mapou Becomes a Lagoon, and Les Hazels, the Mink Wraps): Two days after the Tricinquantenaire celebrations, the New York Times headlined: Haiti’s Poor Crops Cut Down Trade. Coffee had not turned out well and the Banque had to buy nearly a million dollars’ worth of government bonds to provide operating cash for a budget now over $30 million. The president’s brothers Jacques and Arsène seemed to be profiting from the nonfiscal Régie du Tabac, that Estimé-era monopoly whose books were exempt from audit, and police chief Prosper had completed a palatial mansion costing $250,000 on monthly pay of $350. Then, on October 11, 1954, howling over slate-gray seas, eighty-knot winds lashed up from the south. Hurricane Hazel hit the coast at Port-à-Piment, ripped viciously past Cayes, all but destroyed Jérémie, leveled villages, killed at least a thousand victims, denuded forty percent of Haiti’s coffee bushes, flattened irretrievably the new Magloire-sponsored banana plantations, and uprooted half the country’s cacao trees. Nan Mapou, a prosperous village outside Port-à-Piment, was converted into a mile-long lagoon. The world reacted generously. U.S.S. Saipan was on the scene within twenty-four hours, and contributions came from the Red Cross, the United States with grants ultimately totaling nearly $5 million, Venezuela, Cuba, Jamaica, Ghana, and Guadeloupe. Years afterward, visitors to outposts in the back country would stumble on private hoards of relief supplies in army storerooms, prefectures, and shops. The word Hazel entered Haiti’s vocabulary: henceforth, mink wraps worn by officials’ wives were styled les Hazels.