News Agencies
Infosearch:
José Cadenas
Analyst
Bureau Chief
USA
Research Dept.
La Nueva Cuba
September 3, 2008
HURRICANE Gustav damaged 100,000 homes and devastated schools, power
supplies and tobacco crops in western Cuba, officials said today, as
Fidel Castro hailed preparations that prevented any deaths.
Gustav, which killed more than 80 people in the Dominican Republic,
Haiti and Jamaica, tore through western Cuba late on Saturday as a huge
Category Four storm on the five-level Saffir-Simpson Scale, with winds
gusting up to 340km/h.
It crashed into the US Gulf Coast today as a Category Two hurricane near
New Orleans, where Gustav's torrential rains and storm surge were
threatening to inundate the city.
Gustav damaged more than 100,000 houses, 370 schools and hundreds of
kilometres of electricity and telephone cables in Cuba but only injured
19 people, officials said.
Former president Fidel Castro warned that the island's recovery would be
slow, but hailed preparations for the storm.
"The task we have ahead needs time and experience," he said. "Nothing is
more devastating than the destruction and damage after a hurricane."
Castro, who has not been seen in public since a July 2006 stomach
operation for an undisclosed illness, maintains influence through
comments in newspapers, although his brother, Raul, is now president.
Fidel personally directed hurricane emergency procedures when he was in
power and praised the "hundreds of thousands" of Cubans who helped in
storm preparation and recovery efforts.
Cuban authorities said today they had evacuated 467,000 people across
the country, including 77 per cent of the population of the western
Pinar del Rio province and the Isle of Youth, which was hit first.
In Pinar del Rio, 86,000 homes were damaged, 90 electricity pylons and
1200 electricity and telephone poles were knocked down, the Granma
newspaper reported.
"This blow is hard, very hard," said vice president Jose Ramon Machado.
Radio Rebelde reported that 87 per cent of homes on the Isle of Youth,
with 86,550 inhabitants, had been damaged.
"The situation is much more complicated than we imagined in the
beginning," said Ana Delgado, Communist Party first secretary for the
low-lying island.
In a blow to the key tobacco industry, more than 3,414 fragile
warehouses were also destroyed, said Olga Tapia, first secretary of the
Communist Party in Pinar del Rio, adding that heavy rains had soaked 906
tons of tobacco leaves.
Ms Tapia said the leaves could be dried out but did not give a value for
the estimated damage to the harvest.
She also said 372 schools were damaged in the province, delaying a
return to classes
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