AREQUIPA, Peru – Three weeks after the devastating passage of Hurricane Oscar through eastern Cuba, testimonies from survivors continue to emerge. Such is the case of Ramona, an elderly resident of the Guantanamo municipality of San Antonio del Sur, who found a lifeline in the windows of her home.
As part of the tour in support of the victims, the visual artist Daniel Ross Diéguez collected statements on YouTube that describe the most critical hours during the impact of the cyclone.
As Ramona remembers, it was around 4:00 AM when her house began to flood. She was lying down and, faced with the surprise, her initial reaction was to try to save her belongings. He didn’t have enough time.
While the water swept away her things, including the television, the old woman tried unsuccessfully to open the front door. The force of the current carried away the structure, so he had to hold on to a tree in front of the house and little by little advance towards the windows.
Ramona then clung to the blinds and as she the flood As he grew up he had to adapt to the circumstances.
“As the water grew… The water went up and held me by one hand.” [persiana]; from the second, from the third, as far as the water reached. “He caught us there all that time,” says the Guantanamera woman.
Another 80-year-old man in the house spent several hours on top of a chair and clinging to a window in the room. “I hear people talking, I’m drowning,” the old man said around 6:00 AM.
Shortly after, both Ramona and her partner were rescued by two young men “who jumped headfirst” with a rope. “We are alive thanks to them. “I have no way to thank you,” she said excitedly.
Oscar was formed quickly and arrived in eastern Cuba on October 20 in the midst of a massive collapse of the national electrical system. Cubans had been without electricity for dozens of hours and many were unaware of the impact of the hurricane.
Although the meteorological event barely reached category one on the Saffir-Simpson scale, it was one of the most devastating in recent years.
The number of deaths due to the passage of the cyclone through the province of Guantanamorose to eight, according to official data revealed this Wednesday in a note from the National Civil Defense General Staff.
According to the communication transmitted in the official Caribbean Channeleight people died and two children were injured. Two other Cubans remain missing according to the regime’s data.
The deceased They were identified as Francisco Colombia Matos, 92 years old; Esmeraldo Noah Fiffe, 82; Antolino Arias Domínguez, 84; Alexander Saben Matos, 42; Iriannis Labañino Domínguez, 31, and Liz Anyi Elíaz Labañino, 5; María Martha Osorio Matos, 81 years old; all of them from San Antonio del Sur, and Ramón Díaz Matos, 86, from the municipality of Imías.
