Cubans Return To Demolished Homes
Thousands of Cubans returned to homes demolished by Hurricane Paloma even as the once-powerful storm dissipated off the coast on Monday.
The hurricane washed out fishing villages, ripped the roofs off factories and ravaged roads, but the government reported that no one was killed.
Coastal Santa Cruz del Sur took a direct hit when Paloma struck as a Category 4 hurricane Saturday night. Ten-foot-high waves carried away wooden houses, leaving a tangled mess of smashed furniture and strewn belongings bobbing in the surf.
"Everything is gone! Oh, my God!" gasped Xiomara Rivero, a 66-year-old retiree who burst into tears upon returning to her home. The single remaining wall was covered with seaweed. All around lay the ruined remains of her belongings, a table split in two, smashed chairs, a water-logged mattresses.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said the remains of Paloma were hanging off the north coast of central Cuba on Monday, and that the storm was not expected to regain force.
State media reported that in Camaguey province, which includes Santa Cruz del Sur, nearly 200,000 people had been evacuated to shelters or waited out the storm with neighbors or relatives. All but 59,000 had headed home by Monday morning.
For some, however, there wasn't much to return to.
Juan Ramon Nunez lost everything but parts of the floor of his home. He pulled a hammer from the wreckage and held it up. "Look, this is what we saved," he said sarcastically.
"I live here with my wife, my son and my mother," Nunez added. "My mother has had two heart attacks, so we will have to prepare her well before bringing her here."
Cuba already is struggling to recover from major Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, which roared through the island barely a week apart in late August and early September. They caused about $9.4 billion in damage, smashing nearly half a million homes and destroying almost a third of the island's crops.
Javier Ramos said he rebuilt his simple wood-frame house in Santa Cruz del Sur after Ike struck, only to watch Paloma flatten it again.
"My wife hasn't seen this yet," he said Sunday afternoon, as he scavenged bits of clothing and smashed dishes in his front yard. "I don't know how she's going to react. It's going to be terrible."
Outside Santa Cruz del Sur, some homes were submerged up to their flimsy metal roofs. Banana crops and other farmland was washed out, though there were no official estimates on the loss to the island's dwindling food stocks.
CBS News Producer Portia Siegelbaum reports that, since Cuba was hit by the first two storms in August-September, the Communist government has accepted aid from the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, various U.N. agencies, and from countries ranging from Russia, Brazil, Mexico and Canada to China and Venezuela. It's come in the form of food, water filters, temporary shelter materials, mosquito netting, mattresses and other necessities.
One country Cuba says it won't take aid from is the United States, which offered $5 million after Hurricanes Ike and Gustav.
Vice President Jose Ramon Machado, in Santa Cruz this morning to assess the damage, reiterated the government's refusal saying, "We already gave our opinion about this, we made our point clear. The problem here is the embargo; that is what is causing the real damage. It's been going on for 40 years. That's what must be evaluated when people talk about 'aid,' the rest is pure hypocrisy."
Instead of handouts, Havana wants the U.S. to allow them to buy the needed food and construction materials without demanding cash in advance, and without the slew of restrictions that now govern one-way trade between the two nations (as Washington prohibits the importation of any goods from Cuba).