MIAMI, United States.- The death toll in Cuba after Hurricane Ian passed through Pinar del Río on Monday rose to three, according to a report by the Presidency of the country, which released the number without much prominence, and without details of the identity of the victim and the conditions in which he died.
“Until the time the check-up meeting took place, three deaths were reported as a result of the passage of the hurricane,” official journalist Alina Perera Robbio said on the Cuban Presidency page on Thursday.
Last Wednesday it became known that two people They had died in Pinar del Río due to collapses of their homes after the passage of Hurricane Ian, according to a note from the state agency Prensa Latina.
According to the information, one of the deceased was a woman who lost her life “after the fall of a wall, in the municipality of San Luis”, and the other died due to “the collapse of the roof of a house in which other people were there too.”
According to a note from the EFE agency this Thursday, which cites official reports, material damage has not yet been quantified, but in some localities up to 80% of homes were affected, and in Pinar del Río 58% of schools. suffered damage.
For its part, in several coastal municipalities, the water from the sea penetrations caused by the hurricane has not yet been removed, and in the province of Mayabeque alone, 3,000 people continue to be evacuated.
The Ministry of Agriculture said that in a preliminary way at least 8,500 hectares were damaged in the field, mainly of banana, coffee and yucca, although it does not include Pinar del Río, eminently agricultural and the most affected.
Likewise, hundreds of tons of already stored fruit and vegetables were affected, and agricultural and livestock infrastructure suffered partial damage.
Tobacco, emblematic of Pinar del Río, escaped the hurricane because it is planted in October, but some 5,000 drying warehouses were damaged.
On the other hand, the electricity service has been one of the most affected at the national level. Since the passage of Hurricane Ian, the island has been in a total blackout. Meanwhile, diesel, for vehicles and power plants and which was already scarce before Ian, has become a precious commodity, reads the EFE information.
The state Electric Union (UNE), however, assures that, in some points of the capital, as in other areas of the national territory, it has been possible to connect the current, although it did not specify how many of the 11.1 million inhabitants of the country continue without electrical supply.
According to the company, some 370 megawatts (MW) are currently being generated and served, which represents just over 12% of the country’s total demand at the time of peak consumption.
The UNE assured that it has already connected 37% of the subscribers in Havana and is satisfying just over a third of the usual demand in the capital.
Seven of the country’s 14 thermoelectric plants are operational, although not at full capacity. Most of the others are in the process of starting up and connecting to the SEN, something that can take hours or days.
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