Electricity returns to Havana as residents begin to clean up

Posted on Tue, Oct. 25, 2005

Electricity returns to Havana as residents begin to clean up

BY RUTH MORRIS
South Florida Sun-Sentinel

HAVANA - Residents laid damp shoes along balcony rails and squished the
water out of old mattresses Tuesday, salvaging what little they could
from Wilma's devastating storm surge.

Electricity was restored to most of Havana, and traffic lights began
blinking to life as the city's coastal dwellers mopped up from the most
extensive flooding to hit here in three decades. State-run restaurants
were mostly closed in the touristy colonial district, and traffic was
diverted from the debris-strewn Malecon Boulevard.

"I lost a mirror, and my mattress," said Silvia Quesada, 75, her few
belongings set out to dry in front of her basement apartment. "But you
can't lose your patience, or your tranquility."

On the steps beside her, a neighbor used a teabag as a sponge to wash
off Quesada's muddy pots and pans, and a sea-soaked comforter hung over
her empty bed-frame. Petite and indomitable, Quesada offered to brew a
cup of coffee the minute her coffee maker was clean.

Towering waves overwhelmed Havana's seawall late Sunday, flooding grand
avenues and deteriorated neocolonial apartments, and sending hundreds of
residents scampering up stairwells to higher floors in the dead of night.

By Tuesday, the water had completely receded, and there were still no
reports of storm-related deaths. But in a country where most have access
to very little, the surge brought heavy loss.

"To see what's lost is painful," said Ileana Martin, an accountant who
had pegged more than 100 damp family photographs to a clothes line in
the hope of saving them. Without electricity, she wasn't sure if her
refrigerator still worked, but she doubted it.

"The water came in very, very fast," she said, calculating that the
family had 20 minutes to abandon their home and rush upstairs. "We
didn't think it would tap the ceiling."

Cuba's socialist government supplies basic rations and free housing, but
meager salaries severely limit access to blenders, beds and other
amenities. A small washing machine is often a once-in-a-lifetime buy.

The flooding also fueled concern of delays in preserving Havana's
stylish but crumbling mansions. The government established mixed
public-private enterprises in the early 90s to help restore the city's
colonial and deco treasures, but the work is only a quarter of the way
through.

"This building needs capital repairs," said Alina Quiada, a retired
nurse, sitting below the scooped balcony of an elegant but cracked
apartment complex from the 1920s. "But now, with all the people in the
province who also need help, I think there will be delays. We're not the
only ones affected (by the storm)," she said.

Quiada was referring to flimsy fishing villages along the swamped
southern coast, and farmers' shacks in the Pinar del Rio province, also
badly battered during Hurricane Wilma's passage.

In the countryside, the government dispatched troops to gather yucca and
plantains from flooded fields, the Granma newspaper reported. National
flights, suspended for three days, began to operate under sunny skies.

http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/world/12995297.htm