DEVELOPMENT-CUBA: Picking Up the Pieces after Hurricane Michelle

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Nov 15 2001 (IPS) - Efforts are underway to repair or rebuild tens of thousands of homes after Hurricane Michelle’s passage through Cuba early this month, and wooden shacks will be replaced by concrete houses according to instructions issued by President Fidel Castro.

Ten days after the hurricane struck, 470 homes have been repaired in the province of Matanzas, some 120 kms from Havana, as part of emergency efforts to repair or replace 53,000 homes affected in that area.

Sources with the Provincial Defence Council reported that 1,444 families had received materials for fixing their homes, while public enterprises were working hard to meet the demand for sand, cement, wood and roofing tiles.

“You will receive maximum assistance, rest assured. The response is swift, and everyone knows what they have to do,” Castro told 1,000 local residents Monday of a town where the storm knocked down 82 homes, on his second visit to the worst disaster areas.

After the first tour of the hardest-hit areas by the 75-year- old president, staged before Michelle had even pulled out of Cuba, Castro decided to tap the government reserves to deal with the emergency.

Michelle hit Cuba on Nov 4. Matanzas was the first province to feel the impact of the storm, which traversed the country from south to north with an area of influence of 500 kms and winds averaging 165 kms per hour and peaking at 250 kms per hour.

Classified by local authorities as the worst natural disaster – in terms of material damages, not lost lives – in 50 years, the hurricane affected 45 percent of the national territory, home to 5.9 million people, 53 percent of the population.

But only five people were killed, due to local authorities’ decision to evacuate some 700,000 residents from the areas expected to be in the path of the storm, as a preventive measure. In some cases, the government provided storage of the families’ belongings in safe locations.

Despite the preparations of the Civil Defence Council, the hurricane caused unprecedented damages to the national power grid and telecommunications system, as well as severe damages to housing and agriculture, which have not yet been fully assessed.

“On every block there are three or four houses without a roof, and that’s not counting the ones that are just rubble,” Silvia Fernández, a resident of the town of Agramonte in the region of Matanzas, told IPS.

Twenty kms from Agramonte, in the city of Jagüey, around 2,000 homes were damaged, and some streets were still flooded this week, standing in the way of clean-up and restoration efforts.

All of the province’s bricklayers, including those who have already retired, will have to work for at least a year to repair and replace the damaged homes in Matanzas, according to estimates by local civil defence agencies.

The province will have to produce more than one million concrete blocks by late January, and 20,000 tonnes of cement, 36,000 fibre-cement roofing tiles and 60,000 tonnes of sand will be needed in Matanzas alone.

The biggest challenge to local industry will be manufacturing enough drain pipes and bathroom fixtures.

“We can recover”, “no one will be abandoned to their fate”, “some problems will take a bit longer, but they will all be worked out,” are some of the phrases repeated by local authorities in their daily messages to those left homeless by the storm.

While national resources are being mobilised to rebuild homes, part of a shipment of 22 tonnes of food, medicine, mattresses and other products donated by Venezuela began to be distributed in Matanzas.

Hernán Hernández, director of the state agency Servicios para la Colaboración, said the donations coming in from abroad were first put through a process of inventory and classification, which is being carried out as swiftly as possible.

Cuba immediately received help from the Venezuelan government of Hugo Chávez as well as from China, which donated 604,000 dollars in cash and materials to go towards recovery efforts.

Russia’s Ministry for Special Situations and Civil Defence sent two IL-76 freight planes that arrived Monday full of baby food, canned meat, rice, condensed milk and glass for doors and windows.

Russia’s gesture was met with surprise here, after the government of Vladimir Putin’s unilateral decision to close down an electronic intelligence base that Moscow operated on the outskirts of Havana since 1964.

“The people of Cuba are facing grave problems due to the natural disaster, and are in urgent need of assistance,” Putin said Monday, leaving aside the tension between the two countries caused by the decision to close the base.

The United States government even offered to send experts in damage assessment – the first offer of US assistance since Castro took power in 1959. But Havana responded that the best help would be authorisation for Cuba to purchase food and medicine in that country, which it is banned from doing by the four-decades-old US embargo.

Diplomatic sources said in Cuba that several other Latin American countries, including Mexico, were waiting for an official request for aid from the Cuban government, although local analysts said Castro would not make such a request.

Although a mission made up of representatives of several United Nations agencies travelled last week to the areas hit hardest by Michelle to assess the damages, the global body has not yet announced any donations.

Meanwhile, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is studying the assistance to be provided in coordination with the Cuban Red Cross, said Cristina Estradas, local press officer for the two organisations.