“When it rains in California, it pours,” goes the song. But when it rains in Haiti, it floods. Hurricane Jeanne has brought home again the reality of this tragic experience.

Whereas Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, America, and Haiti were visited by Jeanne, Haiti bore the brunt of the natural disaster. While more than 2,000 people and countless animals have been killed in Haiti, only 37 dead have been registered in the other affected countries.

Gonaives, Haiti’s third largest city, suffered the most. More than 200,000 of its 250,000 inhabitants were made homeless and destitute as the city became a vast swamp. Scenes of citizens climbing on the roofs of half-submerged structures tell a poignant story of survival. In that city alone more than 1,600 bodies have been counted. Some 900 are missing and presumed dead. The officials have resorted to burying decomposing corpses in mass graves.

Joseph Rene St. Fort, a native of Gonaives who now lives in Suffolk County, throws some light on the tragedy of his hometown. “The problem is that Gonaives is about 1 meter below sea level. When there is much rain, the streets are usually flooded as the sea water rises to meet the avalanche coming down from higher elevation.”

Mr. St. Fort, a 40-something father of four, reminisces sadly about his days as a pupil who used to “pray for rain because we didn’t have to go to school.” It didn’t take much rain for half a foot of water to cover the streets, he says. “So we all stayed home to play.”

There was no play this time and Mr. St. Fort and others who originally hail from Gonaives are uniting to come to the rescue of their hometown. Four months ago, Mr. St. Fort became president of Kombite Gonaivien, an association dedicated to helping the less fortunate back home. In taking the reins of the Kombite, which means work association, he asked – and obtained – support to engage two other associations in discussions for a unified front to meet short-and long-term objectives for their city.

L’Alliance Gonaivienne, or Algo, headed by Edith Kenol, and the Association des Anciens du College Immaculee Conception des Gonaives, or Aacicgo, teamed up in time to have a tax-exempt status in New York State as the Konbite Gonaivien Relief Fund. Says Mr. St. Fort: “It’s providential that we came together just as our city faces its worst nightmare.”

Antoine Coq, president of the Aacicgo, concurs. The association of the former students of the premier Catholic secondary school in Gonaives had helped to modernize and enlarge Immaculate Conception. From accommodating 250 students, the school has been housing 450 since 1996 – thanks to the fundraising prowess of Aacicgo.

The latest flood destroyed most of the classrooms and a laboratory, says Mr. Coq. But the computer lab and the library were spared. “Now we have to rebuild and plan for the long term so that we may protect Gonaives from similar disasters,” he says.

Mr. St. Fort asserts that high-retention walls will have to be built, as in the Netherlands, to protect city. Better canals and sewer systems must be constructed and serviced regularly.

Perhaps urban planners will have to look into the possibility of relocating parts of the city to higher ground, just as that is being planned for the Fonds Verettes and Mapou regions near the Haitian-Dominican border, where more than 1,000 individuals lost their lives four months ago following flash floods that engulfed the area.

Last April 30, writing in this space about the sadness I felt for my country that I had not seen for 13 years, I wrote “Haiti, the land of mountains in the Arawak language of the original Indian inhabitants, is in an advanced state of desertification. If nothing is done immediately to stop an ecological catastrophe, big chunks of the land will continue to disappear into the Caribbean Sea.”

Haiti has been more vulnerable than its neighbors because the country’s leadership has been oblivious to the environmental disaster it has allowed to develop during 200 years of existence of what was known as “The Pearl of the Antilles.”

The deforestation of the country began years ago when precious wood, like mahogany and oak, was harvested by the Europeans and Americans. In the 1940s the big “Mapou” trees were felled during a Catholic religious crusade to rid Haiti of voodoo.

The spirits supposedly dwelled in the giant trees under which voodoo ceremonies often took place. In the 1960s Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier ordered a cleanup of the Haitian-Dominican border zones to deny guerrillas safe havens in the woods. The cutting of wood for fuel, especially in the form of charcoal, has also gone a long way to leaving Haiti with about 2% of tree cover.

The challenge for the new leadership in Haiti is awesome. After a political flood – that’s the meaning of Lavalas – that ravaged the country for more than a decade, natural floods threaten the very existence of a poverty-stricken nation whose heroes were the trailblazers of freedom in the Western hemisphere.

But there is a silver lining to these tragic times as the Caribbean Community begins to pull together to find long-term solutions for common problems – such as hurricanes that batter us each year.

At a recent meeting called by the State Department of the region’s representatives in Washington and in another one last Monday of the foreign ministers, the theme has been cooperation on a regional basis to meet the challenge of hurricanes and whatever else, like drug trafficking, that beset us.

There’s also a silver lining in the wide response of Caribbean and American citizens in general to the plight of those badly stricken in the Caribbean, particularly in Haiti. Various organizations in the Haitian community that were at loggerheads have put politics in abeyance to cooperate on supporting their fellow citizens back home.

Several fire stations in the five boroughs have been collecting dry food and clothing for the victims of the hurricanes. Foreign governments and international organizations have sent money, tents, and food to Haiti. They have also dispatched experts and volunteers to help in alleviating the misery that haunts so many.

Those who would like to help may contact Fritz Fougy at the Embassy of Haiti in Washington, at 202-332-4090; Felix Augustin at the New York Haitian Consulate, at 212-697-9767; Henry Frank at the Haitian Centers Council, at 718-855-7275; Joseph Rene St. Fort of Kombite Gonaivien Relief Fund, at 631-764-6923; Joe Placide of Haiti Disaster Initiative, at 718-783-3348, and Brother Buteau Espiegle at 718-856-3323.

Mr. Joseph is Haiti’s envoy to Washington.