▲ The effects of the storms have not yet been calculated. The image, in Batabanó, Mayabeque province, Cuba.Photo Afp
Reuters and Europa Press
La Jornada Newspaper
Friday, November 8, 2024, p. 20
Havana., Cuban authorities reported yesterday that they began to restore electricity supply in the eastern half of the island, a day after hurricane Raphael It left the country without power, leaving some 10 million people in the dark.
Yesterday, government personnel were taking stock of the material damage without reporting any human losses so far.
President Miguel Díaz-Canel convened a National Defense Council to carry out a first evaluation of the impact of the storm in western Cuba.Every step from this moment on is geared towards recovery. Together we will do itsaid the president, who promised to travel to affected areas to have more precise evaluations in the field.
The power grid collapsed on Wednesday afternoon, when Raphael hit Cuba with winds of up to 185 kilometers per hour, damaging homes, uprooting trees and knocking down telephone poles. The hurricane moved yesterday toward the northwest of Havana, entering the Gulf of Mexico, where it no longer posed an immediate threat to land, reported the United States National Hurricane Center.
Two cyclones in one month
Raphael It was another blow to Cuba’s already precarious electrical grid, which two weeks ago collapsed several times and left a good part of its citizens without power for days, and is the second hurricane to hit the island in less than a month after Oscar devastated eastern Cuba in October. In addition, it added to the already existing electricity supply problems.
The country’s aging oil generating plants have struggled for decades to keep the lights on, but this year the system went into crisis as crude imports from allied countries such as Venezuela, Russia and Mexico dwindled. Blackouts lasting several hours have become the norm in much of Cuba.
The local press showed images of downed power lines, metal roofs on the streets and shattered windows. Flooding was widespread.
Raphael It crossed the Cayman Islands as a category one cyclone on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale, before increasing in strength in less than 24 hours to category 3, when it made landfall on the southwestern coast of Cuba.
More than 220,000 people were evacuated from low-lying and vulnerable areas in the country’s western region, officials said, with most returning to their homes yesterday. No one died as a result of the storm.
Artemisa, an agricultural province neighboring Havana, took the brunt of the hurricane’s impacts where it stayed for about two hours before leaving yesterday night through Cabañas Bay, in the same region.
