08 Nov 2007 15:45:59 GMT
Source: Reuters
HAVANA, Nov 8 (Reuters) - A man drowned crossing a river in eastern Cuba
where heavy rains and flooding in the wake of Tropical Storm Noel caused
$500 million in damages to crops, roads and houses, the Cuban government
said on Thursday.
It was the first death reported by Cuba as a result of the torrential
rains dumped on its eastern provinces last week by Noel, the deadliest
storm of 2007, which killed at least 142 people on other Caribbean islands.
Yusmani Tames died trying to cross a swollen river in Granma province,
where floods after Cuba's biggest river, the Cauto, burst its banks, the
government said in a statement published by the Communist Party
newspaper Granma.
It said 22,000 houses had been damaged or destroyed, and thousands of
kilometers of roads flooded.
Authorities confirmed the death of 57 people in Haiti and 85 in the
Dominican Republic, where 48 people remained missing after the storm
unleased mudslides and floods that drove some 80,000 people from their
homes.
Cuba evacuated more than 80,000 people from flooded areas last week. By
Thursday, half had still not been able to return home.
Rains continued in the province of Holguin, where flooding forced the
Cuban nickel industry to shut down one of its three processing plants.
Nickel is Cuba's top export product.
Cuba lost 10 percent of its coffee crop due to Noel, which drenched
eastern provinces already saturated by two weeks of persistant rainfall.
Officials said 50,000 hectares (123,550 acres) of sugar cane fields were
flooded or damaged by the storm in the eastern half of Cuba, which
accounts for half of Cuban sugar output. The floods could delay the
start of the sugar harvest, they said.
Cubans said the flooding caused by Noel was the worst they had seen
since Hurricane Flora hovered over eastern Cuba for several days in
1963. Flora was blamed for 1,200 deaths. (Reporting by Anthony Boadle,
editing by Jackie Frank)
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