By Vanessa Bauzá. Havana Bureau. Posted November 7
2001 in Sun-Sentinel
CIENFUEGOS, CUBA -- As Gloria Ramirez huddled in a corner of her wooden
house watching Hurricane Michelle tear large chunks from her roof, she sent up a
prayer.
"The house was swaying, and I said 'Oh, God, please don't let it fall
apart. Leave me a little piece,'" she said.
And that's what happened.
On Tuesday, Ramirez, 35, sat in her little piece of house — one of its
walls completely gone and barely a roof over her bed — not knowing how she
would recover.
The category 4 storm struck Cuba with 135 mph winds about 50 miles west of
Cienfuegos, a provincial port city on the island's southern coast. The community
of Reina, where Ramirez was raised, was one of the hardest hit.
"I make 100 pesos [$4] as a janitor at the power plant." she said.
"I make a little extra money fishing in the bay with an inner tube. But I
don't have enough to rebuild my house. I won't leave for the shelter because the
thieves will steal my things."
Reina, a sprawling community of wooden shacks and cement homes on the edge
of town, already was one of the poorest in Cienfuegos. Even in normal times,
most residents here get their water from contaminated underground pipes.
Like Ramirez, many here had not yet recovered from the ravages of Hurricane
Lili, which demolished 5,400 homes and destroyed more than a million acres of
crops in 1996. Lili flooded Ramirez's home, rotting its wooden walls and
destroying the furniture.
For five years, Ramirez has been pleading with local and provincial
officials for new housing. Twice this year, she had traveled to Havana to make
her pleas. This time, she planned to go directly to the Council of State in
Havana.
"I'm not asking for a palace, just a little house for me and my two
kids," she said. "For once in my life, I'd just like to live a little
better. Some way, somehow, I have to solve this problem."
Hurricane Michelle destroyed at least 2,000 homes, damaged another 10,000
and killed at least five people in Cuba. No deaths were reported in Cienfuegos,
and officials attributed the low number of casualties to a military-like
evacuation. Residents in Reina said that army tanks arrived as the storm was
raging to transport people who waited until the last minute to leave.
Although the city of 100,000 was hit with the full force of Michelle's
winds, the hurricane was drier than expected. Even in low-lying areas like
Reina, residents reported little flooding.
"We were bracing for more damage," said bartender Carlos Antonio
Delgado, 28. "The rain wasn't bad. The water came up slowly, and the bay
partially protected us."
The storm struck just two days after President Fidel Castro acknowledged his
country faced serious economic problems because of lower world prices for nickel
and sugar — two key exports — and a drop in tourism after the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks. The hurricane was a further blow to Cuba's fragile economy.
Assessing immediate food needs, Castro said almost half of Cuba's 11 million
people would "need something." State organizations were delivering
food reserves and housing materials, and Castro ruled out an appeal for foreign
aid.
"The country has the necessary resources to recover by itself," he
said.
Fellow communist nation China promised to send immediate emergency relief
aid anyway. And Venezuela, whose left-leaning President Hugo Chavez is a close
ally of Castro, sent a planeload of medicine and food Tuesday afternoon. Pope
John Paul II also sent a message of condolences to relatives of victims and
others affected by the hurricane, urging institutions to lend aid.
Cienfuegos Province is home to about a dozen sugar refineries. Sugar cane
fields, due to be harvested in November, and citrus farms were flooded and
flattened. Some roads were impassable as tractors cleared electric poles and
tree limbs, their leaves brown and shriveled as though burned by the winds. Many
small vegetable stands were open on Tuesday, selling pumpkins, cabbage,
plantains and other foods. People gathered around large water trucks to fill
their buckets.
Around the island, classes resumed in most schools on Tuesday. Millions
still were without power, gas and water. Only local phone service had been
reestablished in most areas. Damages to the microwave antennae that provide
national long-distance service continued to snarl communications between Havana
and outlying regions.
Like many in Reina, Luisa del Carmen Diaz, 49, would not go to a shelter,
even though the roof of her bedroom had collapsed. On Tuesday, her moist
mattress was still piled on top of a dresser. Sepia toned photos of her sweet 15
celebration were strewn on the floor as were her clothes and dishes.
"If I go to the shelter, I might be there five, six or seven years.
After Hurricane Lili, [local government officials] said , 'We're going to give
you the keys to a new house,'" Diaz said. "My daughter was pregnant
then. Now she has a 4-year-old son."
This report was supplemented by Sun-Sentinel wire services. Vanessa Bauzá
can be reached at vmbauza1@yahoo.com
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