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Hurricane Fidel
Waterbury
Republican-American,
Editorial, Sep 19, 2004.
The poundings that Florida and central
Gulf Coast have taken from hurricanes this
summer have that region reeling. The widespread
damage to homes and businesses, combined
with the housing-construction boom in Florida,
has left building materials in short supply.
Lumber, cement, shingles and the like are
sold as soon as they're unloaded from delivery
trucks.
But the U.S. economy has the strength and
Americans have the determination and wherewithal
to withstand almost anything that deadly
storms might dish out. In the end, the people
will endure and life will return to normal.
While Americans are fixated on the hurt
that hurricanes put on the Southeast, they
haven't been told very much about the hardships
that hurricanes Charley and Ivan inflicted
on Cuba. Some of the best reporting of conditions
there has come from Vanessa Bauza, Havana
correspondent for the South Florida Sun
Sentinel.
Charley damaged more than 70,000 homes,
destroyed crops, left hundreds homeless
and knocked out power to untold thousands
for weeks.
In the fishing village of Cajio, 45 miles
south of Havana, waves "crashed over
rooftops, ripping wooden homes straight
from ground and leaving behind a surreal
checkerboard of concrete floors," she
wrote. "As the fiercest storm to strike
Cajio in 60 years, Charley spared only 10
of the village's 300 homes. More than 1,200
residents evacuated with little more than
the clothes on their backs."
Ms. Bauza reported on an Ivan evacuee whose
house was "blown to bits" by Charley.
She observed how Ivan destroyed wooden homes
along the coast and reduced furniture "to
piles of scrap wood soaked with seaweed."
Fisherman Luis Izquierdo of Cortés
told her, "It will be a long time until
we have homes again."
As people scavenged the debris of a house
in Cortés, she
met Alvaro Camero: "'A lot of people
have come through here looking for nails
and boards,' he said as he sifted through
the rubble, pulling rusted nails from boards
and placing them in a small dish. 'We don't
have a hardware store.'" Mr. Camero
would use those rusty nails repair his own
home.
Just two years ago, Cuba suffered widespread
devastation from hurricanes Lili and Isadore,
and the poorest Cubans had not recovered
fully when Charley and Ivan struck. Government
officials surveyed the damage in 2002, but
did nothing to help the people rebuild.
Collectivism apparently doesn't extend beyond
the halls of government in Havana.
Still, against all reason, Juana Maria
Ayala, who as a cafeteria worker makes $5
a month (enough to buy one sack of cement
on the black market), expects "the
state to help me repair my house."
The power of propaganda is awesome.
Ms. Bauza's most telling anecdote was Hugo
Olay, whose 103-year-old wooden house in
Cortés was heavily
damaged by Charley. "Inside, his cabinets
and chairs were piled like a heap of scrap
wood. Crabs clung to crevices in the walls.
Olay said he would rely on his mother and
siblings, who live in Miami, to send money
to help him to recover from the damage."
Fidel Castro will have none of that. Should
the Bush administration offer humanitarian
aid, he proclaimed, "We won't accept
a penny from them." In his communist
utopia, the long-suffering Cuban people
apparently haven't suffered enough. In Castro's
warped world, the homeless and the hungry
don't need no stinkin' U.S. dollars.
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