Fishermen remove their boats from the water ahead of the arrival of tropical storm Rafael in Havana on November 5, 2024. Cuba was bracing for Tropical Storm Rafael, which is expected to make landfall on the island as a hurricane on November 6, compounding the misery wrought by a massive blackout and Hurricane Oscar.
“I am desperate, I am homeless, the roof is gone and I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Marta Leon Castro, 57, told AFP. At least five families in her neighborhood had lost all of part of their roofs.
The state newspaper Granma said airports in the western part of the country, including in Havana and the resort town of Varadero, had been temporarily shut as a result of the storm.
A tropical storm warning is in effect in the Florida Keys.
More misery
The storm piled fresh misery on Cuba just two weeks after the island was left without power for four days due to the failure of its biggest power plant and a shortage of fuel to produce electricity.
Cuba has for months been suffering hours-long power cuts—a manifestation of the worst economic crisis since the fall of the Soviet Union, a key ally and financial backer, in the early 1990s.
Last month’s blackout, which took several days to fix, coincided with the passage of Hurricane Oscar, which killed eight people in the country.
The office of Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said Tuesday that it was mobilizing the military to help respond to the storm.
People line up at a bakery in Havana ahead of the arrival of Hurricane Rafael.
“We have activated the National Defense Council to provide the maximum attention to the passage of Hurricane Rafael,” Diaz-Canel said in a post on X.
“Measures have been taken in each place to protect our people and material resources. As we have always done since the revolution, we will overcome this situation.”
Ahead of the storm, state television showed workers clearing drains, collecting garbage and cutting back trees.
In the village of Alquizar, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) southwest of Havana, Liset Herrera, 57, said Wednesday she had been unable to follow the news about Rafael “because there is no electricity.”
Further south, in the coastal village of Ganimar, Marisol Valle, a 63-year-old farmer, came home briefly to collect some belongings before the water reached her home near the sea.
“There didn’t appear to be a soul left” after the villagers had been evacuated, she said.
© 2024 AFP
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Hurricane Rafael triggers nationwide blackout in Cuba (2024, November 7)
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