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Article snippet: GUSTAVIA, St. Barthélemy — The pace is frantic. Residents with shovels clean the streets. Dump trucks laden with the stumps of storm-ravaged trees rumble back and forth along narrow streets. Construction crews clear downed telephone poles and debris from houses and businesses in a race to restore the lifeblood of this small Caribbean island — tourism. Those who live on St. Barthélemy — working in its restaurants, building its homes, fishing its seas — know there is nothing without it. And Hurricane Irma, which plowed through this part of the Caribbean, killing more than two dozen people and seriously damaging or destroying the majority of structures on some islands, also struck a devastating blow to the industry so many rely on. “We don’t have a choice,” said Jordan Laplace, a fisherman whose family has lived on the island for generations. “Tourism is the only way to live. We don’t have anything else.” The storm leveled hotels, eroded beaches and turned marinas into graveyards for scuttled yachts. Islands that were hit are still trying to assess the hurricane’s economic impact, wondering how and even if they will be able to restore the islands to the former magnets they were before Irma. There’s a lot at stake. Travel and tourism accounts for a higher share of the Caribbean region’s gross domestic product than it does in any other region in the world, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council, supporting more than 2.3 million jobs. The areas of greatest... Link to the full article to read more