The intense rains that this Saturday affected the central region of Cuba left multiple damages in the province of Villa Clara, where the Provincial Defense Committee had to be activated.
The municipalities of Sagua la Grande and Cifuentes are the territories most affected. There the communities of Larrondo and Mariana Grajales were cut off due to the collapse of bridges.
This Sunday morning a report from Rebel Radio He reported that more than 900 people were evacuated.
In Sagua la Grande, 17 people were kept in evacuation centers and 689 are sheltered in the homes of relatives or friends, while in Cifuentes more than 200 residents are in a similar situation, according to the Cuban News Agency (ACN).
The floods in both territories were caused by the overflowing of the river and the saturation of the soil.
As stated to the ACN Amaury Machado Montes de Oca, head of the Forecast Group of the Provincial Meteorological Center, the accumulated rains this Saturday in Villa Clara classify the rains as intense, and reported records such as 156 mm in Sitiecito, 91.8 mm in the Alacranes reservoir and 54 mm in the city of Sagua la Grande.
This Saturday, one house was reported to have completely collapsed, two with partial damage and eight with minor damage. Local authorities were in the areas where flooding has been reported to continue evaluating the magnitude of material losses.
The Alacranes dam, located in Sagua la Grande, and the third reservoir in the country in terms of storage capacity, was 68.2% full this Saturday, “without representing eminent danger,” according to the ACN.
The vulnerability in this sense is reported by the Alacranes-Pavón magistral canal towards the town of Viana, which receives discharges from the sugarcane fields and surrounding crops, as explained to the local media by Lizardo González Saavedra, delegate of the National Institute of Hydraulic Resources in that province.
Another important facility in the area that is affected is the “9 de Abril” Municipal Hospital of Sagua la Grande, whose ground floor basement was flooded due to heavy rains.
Leidy Saray Rodríguez Hernández, general director of Public Health in Villa Clara, told ACN that “the penetration of water is large-scale and the lower service areas are inactive.”
At the health institution the elevators had to be disabled and damage was reported in the kitchen area, and this Sunday morning the drainage of the floods with motor pumps continued.
Despite this, the center continued to operate, and to provide support for the possible evacuation of patients, the emergency intensive care rooms in the Quemado de Güines and Corralillo municipalities were activated, as detailed by Rodríguez Hernández.
