By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Aug 22 2001 (IPS)

The increase in cyclone activity seen in recent years in equatorial areas of the Atlantic basin points to a growing risk of major hurricanes, said José Rubiera, the director of the Cuban Meteorology Institute’s National Centre of Forecasts.

The Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean could be hit this year by as many as 11 tropical cyclones, three of which will be severe, warn meteorologists in Cuba.

Tropical storm Chantal, which recently caused 2 deaths in Trinidad and soaked several other Caribbean islands, hit Mexico’s Yucatan region Tuesday on its way to the Gulf of Mexico.

Rubiera told IPS that 1995 to 2000 was the most active five- year period in the 20th century in terms of hurricanes, which are associated with 25-year cycles of high and low levels of activity.

In 1998, two hurricanes left a trail of destruction in the Caribbean. In September that year, Georges swept through several island nations, and just a month later Mitch battered Honduras and Nicaragua, causing more than 10,000 deaths and over six billion dollars in material losses.

Rubiera pointed out that cyclone activity was intense in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, before it began to ebb in the 1960s. A new cycle of activity then began in 1995.

The storm activity “is linked to currents and temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean, and to periods of drought and rainfall in Africa’s sahel region, which run in 25-year cycles that influence the number of tropical storms,” said the expert.

The sahel is a region of savannah and grasslands immediately south of the Sahara, stretching all the way from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea.

The worst storm recorded in Cuba swept through in 1934, when a category 5 hurricane (the most destructive kind) hit the island, accompanied by a six-metre high “storm tide” that buried Santa Cruz del Sur, a coastal town in the province of Camaguey, 558 kms from Havana, killing 3,500 residents.

The victims could have been saved if they had been evacuated in time, said Rubiera, who stressed the need for adequate preparedness and prevention during cyclone season. “The important thing is to save human lives, and that is what we are working for,” he stated.

In his view, Cuba has good forecasting and civil defence systems, the necessary means of publicising storm warnings and, “above all, the support of the government” in dealing with the dangers posed by storms.

“When an intense hurricane comes, the probability of which is logically increasing with the passage of time, we will be prepared in order to keep the damages at a minimum, and we will try to ensure that not one single Cuban is killed,” he said.

Cuba was fortunate in 1995, a very active season that was marked by “19 cyclones classified as tropical storms or hurricanes, none of which hit Cuba,” Rubiera pointed out.

Then in 1992, a relatively calm year, Hurricane Andrews raced across the southern part of the U.S. state of Florida, claiming more than 40 lives and causing enormous material damages. Andrews “was the most costly storm in U.S. history,” the expert added.

Geographically close although ideologically distant, Cuba and the United States have no choice but to share meteorological information.

“The weather does not recognise borders, which are manmade. A hurricane that threatens or thrashes Cuba today will do the same tomorrow in Florida. At the same time, a storm in the United States can head towards this island,” he said.

Rubiera stressed “the free sharing of data and information” between the meteorological services of the United States, Canada, the countries of Central America and the Caribbean, as well as Mexico, Venezuela and Colombia.

Those are the countries that make up the Hurricane Committee of the fourth region of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), a United Nations agency presided over by Max Mayfield, the director of the U.S. Hurricane Centre.

“Meteorologists, no matter where we are located, get along well. Our personal relations are good, and a spirit of cooperation, aimed at saving lives under such dangerous circumstances, always prevails,” said Rubiera, the vice-president of the Hurricane Committee.

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