Images and videos released show flooded homes, as well as residents safeguarding their belongings after the water rose.
LIMA, Peru – Floods in low areas of Baracoa, in the province of Guantánamo, have emerged in recent hours as a result of the flooding of the Miel River and the rains that have affected the territory.
According to publications by the officer Primada Visión, also cited by CubadebateThe effects are especially notable in areas of the city such as Bohorque (Calle 7 and 9), Cabacú (Calle 13 and 15), Reparto Dap, Dos Caminos, Zona del Combinado Cárnico (Matadero) and Vega Larga.
Images and videos released show homes flooded during the last night and early morning of this Saturday, as well as residents trying to safeguard their belongings in the midst of rising water.
The current rainfall further exacerbates the situation in eastern Cuba, a region strongly affected by the passage of Hurricane Melissa at the end of last October.
Other damages and reports of abandonment
After more than two weeks of Hurricane Melissa passing through eastern Cuba – which left more than 90,000 homes damaged and around 100,000 hectares of crops affected, according to data from the United Nations System on the Island—hundreds of residents of Holguín, Santiago de Cuba and Granma assure that the announced international aid is not reaching the hardest hit communities.
After a publication of CubaNet on Facebook inviting readers from the east of the country to report what they had received, the response is overwhelming: almost 800 comments in a few hours, mostly denouncing minimum deliveries, sales in warehouses or total absence of donations.
The testimonies describe a panorama of precariousness that contradicts the official discourse. Neighbors from different Holguín municipalities claimed to have received only basic rations. One user wrote: “Two pounds of rice, one of oil and peas, from then on nothing more.”
Another resident of Holguín indicated that they were only given “1 pound of sugar,” while a third reported that “a given package arrived as a gift but noted in the quota as that month’s rice and a pound of sugar.”
In San Germán, Holguín, another person said that first they received “one pound of rice and then four,” and nothing more. In neighborhoods like Vista Alegre, also in Holguín, they claim that they have not received sales or donations, and that some areas continue without electricity due to transformers damaged by the cyclone.
The complaints are repeated in Santiago de Cuba. From Chivirico, in the Guamá municipality, a resident stated that what arrived were products sold in poor condition: “churrioso rice”, peas “from how many years ago because they are difficult to soften” and a can of sardines that he presumes came from Spanish donations.
