After floods, saltwater a concern in Cuba

Posted on Wed, Oct. 26, 2005

CUBA

After floods, saltwater a concern in Cuba

Salt from the sea that flooded Havana is bound to damage an already
precarious housing stock, some experts fear.

BY FRANCES ROBLES

frobles@herald.com

The crashing waves that flooded Havana's coast Monday brought another
destructive element besides water: salt.

The sea salt will contaminate and corrode hundreds of already precarious
buildings, some older than 100 years, experts said. It's a risk the
city's housing stock, already strained from massive overcrowding and
years of neglect, can hardly endure.

''The floods will make everything worse,'' said Florida International
University professor Nicolás Quintana, a former city planner in Cuba.

``Will the floods ruin the buildings? These buildings are already ruined.

``I don't think half the people will be able to go back to their homes,
and they don't have anywhere to go.''

Hurricane Wilma blew past Cuba Sunday night with an average downpour of
nine inches of rain in two days. But the most surprising destruction
that tore down hotel windows and shredded roads was not caused by rain;
it came from the sea.

Shortly before 2 a.m. Monday at the malecón , the capital's seawall
captured in countless postcards where sweethearts gather to smooch and
stare at the sea, began coming apart.

The storm surge crashed over the seaside highway, rushing water three
feet deep and five blocks back.

Basement apartments in already crumbling buildings were ruined, and
civil defense officers had to don scuba gear to rescue the stranded.

Not since a 1993 storm dubbed the ''Storm of the Century'' had anything
like that happened, experts said.

Havana's elevated grand old promenade, the Paseo del Prado, was so
inundated that only the lion statues poked through the water.

''That is something I have never seen before,'' said 70-year-old Mario
Coyula, a well-known Cuban architect, by phone from Havana.

Romans used salt to finish off their enemies' vegetation, Coyula said,
and the sea just dumped a bunch all over the city.

Coyula said three studies showed Cuba needs underwater breakers to
soften the waves' blow, but cost estimates in the millions make the
project prohibitive.

But while the images of waves thrashing against the Cuban Foreign
Ministry were dramatic, Coyula said storm surge is just one part of an
ongoing problem.

''The waves were more spectacular, but it's the daily problem of sea
salt that damages the brick, steel and paint,'' Coyula said.

``It's a very serious price for the privilege of living by the sea. The
flood just aggravates the situation.''

He said heavy rainfall is actually much worse for the buildings, but the
older ones tend to stand up to it more than those built between 1910 and
1940. A survey of the damage will be done today, now that the water has
receded, he said.

Quintana said 70 percent of Havana's housing stock is in precarious
condition, meaning in the United States, they would be condemned.

He said almost all the buildings are in urgent need of repair, and the
regular onslaught of storms doesn't help.

The 500-year-old Cuban capital holds the world's largest collection of
Spanish colonial buildings, but many are so deteriorated that they
regularly crumble under heavy rainfall.

About 1,400 buildings must be abandoned each year for fear of collapsing.

The Cuban government said Wilma damaged 2,000 homes.

''There have been serious damages, because there were many hours of
storm surge and strong waves,'' Humberto Camilo Torres, president of the
Municipal Defense Council, told Granma, Cuba's official government
newspaper.

He said 3,000 people fled their homes, adding to the 120,887 people in
Havana who had evacuated.

''I have lived here for 18 years,'' Jesús Pérez Cabrera, who lives along
Playa Avenue, told Cuban newspaper Granma on Monday.

'And no other hurricane, not even the `storm of the century' in 1993 had
so much penetration from the sea.''

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/cuba/12997174.htm