Posted on Sun, Oct. 23, 2005
WILMA'S PATH
Storm pounds Cuba with rain and floods
Cuba's southern coast experienced flooding, with the village of Guanimar sitting in up to three feet of water.
BY ANITA SNOW
Associated Press
HAVANA - Hurricane Wilma drenched western Cuba with heavy rain Sunday and flooded evacuated communities along the island's southern coast.
''The Worst Is Yet to Come,'' Cuba's communist youth newspaper Juventud Rebelde declared in its Sunday edition. The government in recent days evacuated more than 625,000 people, especially in the island's west, as Wilma stalled off Mexico's Yucatán coast.
Some people were ordered by civil defense officials to leave their homes as early as Wednesday, with most staying with friends and relatives, and the rest at shelters set up at schools and other government buildings.
Cuban state television reported Sunday that the ocean had penetrated up to a half-mile in some southern coastal communities.
Guanimar, a small fishing village of brightly painted wooden houses south of Havana, was under water Sunday that was as high as three feet in some places. The community frequently floods during hurricanes, and its several hundred residents had been evacuated.
Cuban authorities were especially worried about flooding across the northern coast of the western provinces of Pinar del Río and Havana starting late Sunday and continuing into today. One key point of concern was Havana's Malecón seawall. High waves can spill over it during hurricanes and flood the adjacent coastal highway and neighborhoods of old multistory buildings.
Alcohol sales in Havana, home to two million people, were being shut down Sunday, and all stores closed. Local civil defense officials said the government would switch off electricity in Havana -- a standard safety procedure -- if Wilma's high winds were considered dangerous to the capital.
Wilma was not expected to make landfall in Cuba as it moved past the island's northern coast, but it did spin off a pair of tornadoes over the weekend that left six injured and destroyed more than 20 homes and tobacco curing houses in the country's western region.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/cuba/12979773.htm
WILMA'S PATH
Storm pounds Cuba with rain and floods
Cuba's southern coast experienced flooding, with the village of Guanimar sitting in up to three feet of water.
BY ANITA SNOW
Associated Press
HAVANA - Hurricane Wilma drenched western Cuba with heavy rain Sunday and flooded evacuated communities along the island's southern coast.
''The Worst Is Yet to Come,'' Cuba's communist youth newspaper Juventud Rebelde declared in its Sunday edition. The government in recent days evacuated more than 625,000 people, especially in the island's west, as Wilma stalled off Mexico's Yucatán coast.
Some people were ordered by civil defense officials to leave their homes as early as Wednesday, with most staying with friends and relatives, and the rest at shelters set up at schools and other government buildings.
Cuban state television reported Sunday that the ocean had penetrated up to a half-mile in some southern coastal communities.
Guanimar, a small fishing village of brightly painted wooden houses south of Havana, was under water Sunday that was as high as three feet in some places. The community frequently floods during hurricanes, and its several hundred residents had been evacuated.
Cuban authorities were especially worried about flooding across the northern coast of the western provinces of Pinar del Río and Havana starting late Sunday and continuing into today. One key point of concern was Havana's Malecón seawall. High waves can spill over it during hurricanes and flood the adjacent coastal highway and neighborhoods of old multistory buildings.
Alcohol sales in Havana, home to two million people, were being shut down Sunday, and all stores closed. Local civil defense officials said the government would switch off electricity in Havana -- a standard safety procedure -- if Wilma's high winds were considered dangerous to the capital.
Wilma was not expected to make landfall in Cuba as it moved past the island's northern coast, but it did spin off a pair of tornadoes over the weekend that left six injured and destroyed more than 20 homes and tobacco curing houses in the country's western region.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/cuba/12979773.htm
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