A 60-year-old man from Jiguaní, Granma, who the local press did not identify, is the first to die during the floods that have affected eastern Cuba in recent days. The victim died “due to drowning,” CNC TV said in a report about the damage caused by the rains.
Neither the official press nor national leaders seem overly alarmed by the floods. A different panorama is shown by the photographs that, from different towns, point out the urgency of taking quick measures to contain the damage and prevent more human lives from being lost.
Only in the provincial newspapers is the concern of the leaders insinuated by a reality before which, as has happened in other moments of crisis, the authorities react too late. Inertia and clumsiness in management seem to also mark the road map before the rains this week.
The local Granma newspaper, The Demajagua, he pointed various “flood damage” that the local authorities were engaged in “assessing”. Jiguaní presents, according to the newspaper, a “very tense” situation, after the “overflow of the channel” of the river, which caused the stampede of the inhabitants of the area at 3:00 in the morning.
The town also does not have electricity, “due to the fall of cables”, and the pass that communicated it with the town of Dos Ríos is interrupted by the flooding of the Contramaestre. Throughout the province there are “severe damages to homes, bridges and other roads, as well as to agriculture.”
In the Contramaestre himself, he reported Sierra Maestra, “rainfalls have been strong and locally intense, with a cumulative amount of 175.9 millimeters (mm) until the end of the morning, the highest figure of the year.” The records were also broken by the Granma towns of Bartolomé Masó, with 360 mm, and Minas de Charco Redondo, with 280, “unprecedented figures”, the media noted.
This Thursday, 14ymedio knew the emergency due to the lack of supplies in the eastern territory. “This way, there is no one who goes out to look for food,” Walfrido Rojas, a resident of Dos Ríos, explained by telephone. “At least we had a little cornmeal saved, but in our neighborhood there are people who no longer have anything to eat.”
According to reported on their social media the independent journalist José Luis Tan Estrada, in Camagüey “the water reaches Pobre street in the main city. In addition, there are reports of flooding in various districts: Vista Hermosa, Piña, El Jardín, Saratoga, La Guernica, Salomé, La Mosca , Montecarlo, Jayamá, El Retiro and other low-lying areas”.
In addition, he denounced the existence of “dirty sewers and drains”, “houses in danger of collapsing” and “several areas without electricity.” Until 8:00 a.m. this Friday, he summarized, the level of rainfall in the province had reached 101 mm of water.
The accumulated in Las Tunas was 67.2 mm on Thursday night. The most affected communities have been those of Jesús Menéndez, Jobabo and Manatí, as well as the provincial capital. “The rains continue! Stay alert,” warned the local press. Not very optimistic, the note called not to be overly happy about the “relief” of having filled the dams, since the weather left “naked debts accumulated for years and damage to homes and infrastructure” throughout the territory.
The newspaper Granma He did not see too many reasons to be concerned, but concentrated, as one of his notes from this Friday states, on the fact that “the waters have been good for the reservoirs.” With great difficulty he translates the damage into figures, which only refer roughly to how many inhabitants were evacuated in each town.
Only when referring to Camagüey, the note acquires a realistic tone: “The greatest amount of damage is reported in the main municipality, in 64 houses, of which 41 partially lost their roofs and 14 completely. Eight complete buildings and one of them collapsed. partially. An elderly person was injured when the roof of his house, located in the historic center of the city, fell while trying to repair the roof; but his state of health is stable and without danger to life, “he listed.
This Wednesday, the Cuban Institute of Meteorology issued a special notice to explain that the cause of the heavy downpours is the combination of a trough in the middle and upper levels of the troposphere over the Gulf of Mexico, together with a humid flow of the south in the low levels, to which is added the evening instability.
More accurate than the press, but with the utmost discretion, the Cuban Meteorological Radars They have shown the satellite diagrams that show the evolution of the rains: a compact mass, which refuses to leave eastern Cuba, occupies the center of the map.
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