ECONOMY-CUBA: Hurricane Damages Will Prolong Crisis

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Nov 10 2001 (IPS) - It took Hurricane Michelle just 15 hours to cause unprecedented damages in Cuba, which will further delay recovery from the Caribbean island nation’s decade-long economic crisis.

Michelle, “the worst natural disaster” – in terms of material losses – in the 42 years since Fidel Castro seized power, according to authorities, arrived just when the country was attempting to head off a new economic setback.

The prices of Cuba’s export products remain low, and the Sep 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington spawned a drop in remittances from Cubans living in the United States and a slump in tourism.

The hurricane swept across the island Sunday with a 500- kilometre radius of influence and average winds of 165 kilometres per hour, which peaked at 250 kilometres per hour.

Damages were caused in eight provinces accounting for 45 percent of the national territory and home to 5.9 million people, 53 percent of the total population, according to an official report.

Although it claimed only five lives, Hurricane Michelle caused “major material losses, much greater than on any occasion since the triumph of the revolution,” Vice-President Carlos Lage said late Thursday.

The government has had to draw on a fund of reserves held for extreme emergencies, which must be replenished for future catastrophes.

China and Venezuela immediately provided assistance, Mexico is prepared to do so pending an official request, and the United States offered to send damage-assessment experts, in the first such gesture since Castro came to power.

Havana responded to Washington’s offer with a proposal that it be allowed to purchase food, medicine and raw materials for producing pharmaceutical products from the United States – transactions banned by the embargo in effect against Cuba since 1962.

Meanwhile, the resident United Nations coordinator in Cuba, Luis Gómez Echeverri, told IPS that a mission set up by several agencies visited the hardest-hit areas this week and found severe damages.

Gómez Echeverri, who is also the local representative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), said Michelle hit “at the worst possible moment,” just when Cuba was “very vulnerable” to the impact of the slowdown of the international economy.

Nevertheless, he said he was impressed by authorities’ swift response to the disaster, and underlined that international aid to Cuba ended up where it was supposed to, and was not diverted, as occurred in some countries.

“I would like to think that we are working on strengthening the development programmes we have here, and providing important support to the Cuban people, to help them deal with the challenges they were already facing, which will only get worse now,” he said.

The worst catastrophe on record in Cuba occurred in 1932, when a category five hurricane (the most severe) brought a six-metre high “storm tide” that buried an entire town and claimed 3,500 lives.

The worst disaster since the 1959 revolution occurred in 1963, when cyclone Flora blasted the island for 72 hours, leaving a death toll of 1,150.

But while only five people died last Sunday, the economic damages caused by Hurricane Michelle were even worse than the devastation wrought by cyclone Flora.

Regarding the magnitude of the damages, Lage said precise information would be released as soon as “the meticulous and serious work of compiling data” was completed.

The vice-president explained on TV that it could take up to a month to repair the national power grid. Hurricane Michelle knocked down 125 high-voltage pylons, and left the main thermoelectric plant in western Cuba out of commission. In that area, demand already surpasses electricity-generating capacity.

Repairs to the grid will also restore potable water supplies in the main cities. The cooking gas service, on which more than one million people in Havana depend, must also be reestablished.

In addition, the government reported that it would take six months to install a permanent antenna to replace the destroyed microwave tower. Meanwhile, a provisional antenna is to be in place by Nov 18, allowing TV and radio broadcasting and the telephone services to get back to normal.

The public health system is to be fully functioning next Monday, with the exception of around 25 clinics that were totally or partially destroyed.

Schools began to reopen this week, and all students are to be back in the classroom by Monday, authorities announced. The students of 1,500 damaged schools and 50 that were totally wrecked are to be reassigned to new facilities by then.

The damages caused by the hurricane “have forced us to make unforeseen expenditures, and can further slow down the flow of tourists, which has immediate repercussions on local living standards,” an economist who preferred to remain anonymous told IPS.

The most severe consequences for the Cuban population have yet to be quantified, and involve damages to housing and agricultural production, including extensive damage to sugar cane, bananas and citrus crops.

Preliminary data provided by the civil defence agency points to 45,000 damaged homes, 2,000 of which were totally demolished. Some 705,000 people were evacuated.

The impact on agriculture can already be felt in the free farmers’ markets, and the availability of foodstuffs, already poor due to the decade-old economic crisis and the severe drought in the late 1990s, will worsen.

Agriculture Minister Alfredo Jordán issued instructions to remove damaged crops and immediately plant fast-growing vegetables to replace crops like banana trees, which take nearly a year to recover.