“I want to be a meteorologist.” That phrase, repeated with insistence since a child, marked the fate of Yinelys Bermúdez Souza, today Deputy Director of the Institute of Meteorology of Cuba.
Its history, counted in a publication of the Minister of Science, Technology and Environment, Armando Rodríguez Batista, reflects the vocation and perseverance of the one who turned a children’s dream into a public service career.
Since childhood, in his native Pedro Betancourt (Matanzas), Yinelys watched the rains fascinated, the wind and the tension with which the elders faced the cyclones.
“I became interested in a way that with 8, 9, 10 years I painted maps, I imagined cold fronts, how they were going to arrive, if the temperature was going to decrease,” he recalled, inspired by the television presentations of Dr. José Rubiera and the MSC. Armando Lima, who years later would become his mentor.
Cuban television meteorologist
The lack of the meteorology career in Cuba in the early 1990s put its life project at risk.
Her mother, determined to help her, managed to talk by phone with Armando Lima, who suggested studying geography or physics at the University of Havana and then specializing.
Yinelys achieved the only geography square available in Matanzas and began to be linked to the Institute of Meteorology until your diploma on severe storms in Zapata Ciénaga.
“I had the great luck and a pride for me that who taught me to predict time was the MSc. Armando Lima, with whom my mother had spoken,” he said excitedly.
His training included long shift nights at the forecast center, where he perfected the maps he once drew in childhood.
Bermúdez has always defended the importance of collective work of the Cuban weather system.
“The most important thing we have are our human resources (…) many hours of work, day and night, to maintain the national security of this country against meteorological phenomena,” he said.
Recently, the specialist He surprised to declare that he would not accept a Nobel Prizein case of being nominated.
“I reject the Nobel Prize. I prefer the recognition of all Cubans, and always keep us alert and vigilant to extreme weather phenomena,” he said, stressing that both the Institute of Meteorology and the civil defense deserve that recognition for saving lives and goods every year.
