By Ray Sanchez | Havana Bureau
3:28 PM EDT, September 9, 2008
HAVANA - Hurricane Ike revisited its wrath on the storm-ravaged western
province of Pinar del Rio Tuesday as aging buildings in Cuba's capital
collapsed under the force of the storm's wind and rain.
By midday, Cuban officials reported 16 partial building collapses in the
capital, brought down by heavy rains and winds from Hurricane Ike.
Downpours continued into the late afternoon as 248,000 people were
evacuated from the crowded Cuban capital. At 2:30 p.m., most of the
Cuban capital was without power. The rains had subsided but the
shrieking winds intensified.
Ike took virtually the same path as Hurricane Gustav, making landfall
about 10:30 a.m. over Pinar del Rio, Cuba's tobacco-producing zone in
the western mainland. Weak but still dangerous, the storm's eye roared
over the community of Los Palacios, one of several towns battered by
Gustav just 10 days earlier.
State-run television said Tuesday that hurricane-force winds pummeled
the community of El Rosario, sending the sea more than 200 yards into
town, though no injuries or deaths were reported.
Gustav hit the island on Aug. 30 and 31 as a powerful Category 4 storm,
with sustained winds of 150 mph. It tossed trees and power poles like
matchsticks, smashed cars and ripped the roofs and walls from homes and
buildings as it tore through the Isle of Youth and Cuba's
tobacco-producing zone in the western mainland
Ike's eye is nearing Cuba's western shore at this hour, while the
sprawling storm's outer bands continue to buffet the fragile buildings
of Cuba's capital with tropical storm force wind gusts and heavy rain.
With hours to go before the storm moves far enough out into the Gulf of
Mexico for its winds to stop whipping the island, the crowded capital's
fragile buildings are a major concern.
More than 1,000 residents from crumbling tenements in the oldest parts
of the capital were evacuated to the Capitolio building in central Havana.
Maylin Figueredo, 24, stayed with neighbors across the street from the
tiny Old Havana apartment she shares with her four-year-old son.
Her apartment, which was deemed unsafe by local authorities, is
literally a concrete and wood box built beneath a cracked and unsteady
staircase reinforced with wooden beams. Cracks crisscross her walls like
roads on a map. Neighbors in upper floors were evacuated because of the
poor condition of the stairs.
"We're all scared," Figueredo said. "This place could come down any moment."
Figueredo said she removed her TV set to a neighbor's home but her other
belongings - a small refrigerator, an electric fan, a boombox - remained
at home. "We have to protect the little we have but I can't take
everything with me," she said.
State-run television Tuesday showed images of an abandoned building in
Central Havana that collapsed under heavy rains and winds in the early
morning. Several families in the vicinity of the collapse were evacuated.
But some refused to leave.
In a crumbling tenement in Old Havana Monday, Jamila Montes Gola, 41,
and her four children awaited Ike's arrival in their tiny apartment
despite its cracked walls and floors. In the dilapidated building on San
Ignacio Street, neighbors communicate with each other through the cracks
in their floors and ceilings.
"We're staying," Montes said. "We're not going to a shelter. I will
board up the only window and we will sit here and let it pass. Of course
we're afraid, but where do we go?"
In the Vedado neighborhood, a huge metal sign high above the Hotel
Vedado was loosened by the wind. The sign appeared to hang from a cable
as it swung precariously over the building's entrance. Hotel workers
closed off the street and tried to keep passersby away from danger.
At the Hotel Nacional, overlooking the seaside Malecon, dozens of guests
congregated in the ornate lobby, playing cards, dominoes, chatting or
peering out at the storm-swollen waves crashing over the famous seawall.
They were given fliers that read: "For security reasons, all guests
should remain in the lobby of the hotel while the hurricane is crossing
our territory."
Marine Azzouz, 40, who is visiting Cuba from Paris to prepare an
advertising campaign for Havana Club rum, said she felt trapped at the
hotel.
"We couldn't change the date of the trip and now we're here," she said.
"We can't move. We can't work. Maybe I'll take pictures of the rain."
At 2 p.m., the center of Hurricane Ike was located inland over western
Cuba about 65 miles west-southwest of Havana. Ike is moving toward the
west-northwest near 12 mph and this motion is expected to continue for
the next day or so. Maximum sustained winds are near 75 mph.
The storm was expected to move away from the island and into the Gulf of
Mexico between 3 p.m and 4 p.m. near El Rosario in Pinar del Rio.
Ike has battered the island since Sunday night, forcing the evacuation
of more than one million people, killing at least four and cutting a
wide swath of destruction.
In Villa Clara province, two men were electrocuted while attempting to
dismantle a television antenna above their home. In Camaguey and Villa
Clara provinces, a man and a woman were killed when their homes collapsed.
"Our country has had enough of this destruction," said Eduardo Guerra,
who watched the rain and sipped cold coffee as he guarded an Old Havana
building. "Let's hope that Ike passes through quietly and moves on."
Images on state-run television Monday night painted a broad path of ruin
from the second major hurricane to make landfall on the island: toppled
power and telephone towers, towns flooded by up to 10 inches of rain,
damage to historic buildings and the destruction of the fragile homes of
ordinary Cubans. The damage promised yet another painful blow to the
communist island's economy, still reeling from the destruction of more
than 100,000 homes by Hurricane Gustav and damages estimated in the
billions of dollars.
The official Cuban news agency reported damage to several historic
buildings, including the 200-year-old fortress of La Punta near Cuba's
eastern tip. Giant waves damaged Baracoa's 18th century seawall,
destroyed at least 200 homes and flooded streets.
In Camaguey, a UNESCO world heritage site, ornate sculptures and
colonial columns toppled from buildings, and falling power poles crushed
cars in the narrow streets. Unceasing rains swelled rivers and
reservoirs to dangerous levels and caused mudslides.
"This has been a curse on Cuba," said Vanessa Rincon, 46, as she waited
in a long line at a Havana grocery store, holding a handcart full of
candles, water, crackers, bread, soft drinks and chocolate. "We were
spared for so long but now we're coming face-to-face with hell. Our luck
has run out."
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/cuba/sfl-flbcubaike0909sbsep09,0,3496722.story
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