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Posted on Mon, Oct. 14, 2002 in The Miami Herald.
HAVANA - (AP) -- Hurricane Lili battered Cuba's tobacco industry when it
roared across the western part of the island earlier this month, destroying many
of the curing houses used to dry tobacco for the country's world-famous cigars.
The hurricane, which crossed the island on Oct. 1, ''has been a catastrophe
for most of the tobacco industry,'' the Communist Party daily Granma reported.
Lili's heavy rains and high winds flattened about 1,800 of the old curing
houses in the tobacco-growing community of San Juan y Martinez in the western
province of Pinar del Rio, leaving only 102 standing, the newspaper said.
There are about 14,500 curing houses in the region, and more than 10,000 of
those were damaged or destroyed, the newspaper said. Some are made from
weathered wooden planks, while others are made of zinc sheeting.
Granma quoted Edelberto Gonzalez Diaz, a director of Pinar del Rio's tobacco
industry, as saying that most of the tobacco leaves drying inside the curing
houses were largely protected by plastic sheeting, but in some cases water may
have seeped in.
The precise extent of the damage has to be determined.
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