Jérémie, the capital of the Grand’Anse department and one of Haiti’s most historically significant cities — known as the City of Poets — was severely damaged in the August 2021 earthquake, with hundreds of buildings collapsed or rendered unsafe across a city that was already economically marginalized and poorly connected to the rest of the country. Six weeks after the earthquake, the city was still in the early stages of what would be a lengthy and difficult recovery.
The destruction in Jérémie followed a pattern familiar from other earthquake-affected areas: unreinforced concrete buildings that had not been constructed to seismic standards collapsed completely, while better-built structures survived with varying degrees of damage. The randomness of who had survived and who had died — determined in large part by the building standards of the structure they happened to be in at 8:29 AM — left communities trying to make sense of loss that felt both overwhelming and arbitrary.
Grand’Anse department had historically been one of Haiti’s most isolated, connected to the rest of the country primarily by a coastal road that was itself vulnerable to storm damage, and by sea and air links that were limited. The earthquake had further damaged road infrastructure, complicating the delivery of reconstruction materials and limiting economic recovery.
Cultural preservation organizations raised specific concerns about the destruction of historic buildings in Jérémie, a city with exceptional colonial-era architecture that represented a valuable part of Haitian cultural heritage. The loss of these structures — some irreplaceable — was a cultural as well as material loss that deserved specific attention in recovery planning.