HAVANA – He hurricane Melissa made landfall in Jamaica on Tuesday with the strength of a category 5 hurricane, the maximum on the Saffir-Simpson scale. With fierce winds and torrential rain, it is the most powerful storm to ever hit that Caribbean island.
Melissa has already caused ten deaths—three in Jamaica, three in Haiti, three in Panama and one in the Dominican Republic.
According to the National Hurricane Center (NHC), Melissa left Jamaica and is now heading to Cuba, where it is expected to hit the east of the country at night. The authorities declared the “state of alarm” in six provinces: Granma, Las Tunas, Camagüey, Santiago de Cuba and Guantánamo.
Duany lives facing the sea in Siboney Beach, a town 15 km from Santiago de Cuba. He says he lost everything in 2012, when Sandy hit Cuba, an island of 9.7 million people.
“May it not hurt us so much,” the 82-year-old woman prays to the Virgen del Cobre, the patron saint of Cuba.
On Tuesday morning she was evacuated to a house in the highest part of the town, but later decided to return.
“It scares me, but I’m even more scared of being outside my house and having everything little I have taken away like what happened with Sandy, and then they don’t give me anything, not even a bag of cement,” he says walking back.
safe areas
The dictator Miguel Díaz-Canel, with his military uniform, presided from Havana over the National Defense Council that coordinates the preparations.
“We want to once again insist on the magnitude of this event, on the population’s necessary understanding of the risk posed by” the intensity of its winds above 260 km per hour, he warned in a televised message addressed to the country.
“We once again ask our entire population to locate themselves in safe areas to face this hurricane,” he said.
“Evacuations”
Under torrential rain and loaded with their belongings, the residents of Playa Siboney and surrounding towns were evacuated in trucks and military vehicles.
In Cañizo, another nearby town, Dr. Lisania Sánchez, local delegates and soldiers went house to house trying to convince families to leave.
“The order was to evacuate all the inhabitants” of coastal towns, said this doctor in a hurry.
Among dense vegetation, families walked along narrow, slippery paths through the mud to find themselves in safe places, far from the coast and their homes, many built with wood or zinc sheets.
Visibly distraught, some crying, they crowded onto overcrowded buses taking them out of the area. Holding on to the railings, they squeezed their bags with few belongings.
In Santiago de Cuba, the second largest city in the country, Cubans rushed to stock up on non-perishable food, candles, batteries and everything that could help face the hurricane.
“We have bought bread, spaghetti, picadillo. This cyclone is bringing them, but we are going to get out of this,” said a Cuban.
“Electrical outages”
Fuel and electricity outages are expected. Residents filled jerrycans and buckets before water pumping was interrupted, following the official announcement to cut off the power once winds exceed 60 kilometers per hour.
In the city’s main park, silence replaced the usual bustle.
Two powerful hurricanes, Rafael and Oscar, hit western and eastern Cuba in October and November of last year, causing eight deaths and extensive material damage.
