ike in cuba again...

[Ken Gargett]

jose, i hope that the bit about saving lives is true. hope all our friends in cuba and their families are safe and well.

it does not sound as though the tobacco fields will have fared well.

this was on the courier mail website -

Deadly Ike strikes Cuba again

Article from: Agence France-Presse

By Isabel Sanchez in Havana

September 10, 2008 02:37pm

DEADLY Hurricane Ike has made its second pass in a week over Cuba, tearing off roofs and uprooting trees.

Unlike in nearby Haiti, which suffered scores of deaths after being battered by a rapid succession of powerful tropical storms and hurricanes over the past month, Cuba's vaunted civil defence system put in motion the evacuations of some 2.2 million people, sparing countless lives.

The Miami-based National Hurricane Centre said the storm, a category one hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale, was likely to strengthen into a "major storm" in the central Gulf of Mexico.

The storm crashed into Cuba's Pinar del Rio province from the south barely 100km west of the capital, sparking new flooding in a region blasted two weeks ago by Hurricane Gustav.

"Nature gave us another blow. We hadn't even got up from Gustav. Two storms in such a short space of time is terrible," an inhabitant of Pinar del Rio said.

Gustav charged into the Caribbean island's westernmost province on August 30 and destroyed or severely damaged 140,000 homes and buildings before heading to the US Gulf of Mexico coastline.

"In all of Cuba's history, we have never had two hurricanes this close together," Jose Rubiera, the head of Cuba's weather service, said on state television.

Although Ike was much weaker than Gustav - category one compared with category four on the five-notch Saffir-Simpson scale - it compounded Pinar del Rio's devastation, where some 100,000 homes were already destroyed and 600 schools damaged.

In the capital, authorities evacuated more than 20,000 people from colonial-era Old Havana, an elegant but fragile UNESCO World Heritage Site where centuries-old buildings are prone to cave-ins.

Power poles, trees and traffic lights lay battered on the ground and only police patrolled the streets.

Residents barricaded their homes, lacking electricity and running water as they waited for the storm to pass.

Giant waves beat against the walls of Cuba's famous Malecon seaside walkway.

The storm was expected to head northward over the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico within hours, where it could intensify into a major hurricane, the NHC said.

It was expected to move toward the southern Texas coastline where it could strike land early on Saturday, according to the NHC forecast.

In the Gulf of Mexico, home to the bulk of US oil refineries, Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell said yesterday it had already evacuated 150 workers and would move its remaining 500 employees out of the Gulf by tomorrow.

Ike drove some two million Cubans from their homes as it sliced across the lower half of the island on Sunday, leaving three men and a woman dead.

It left a higher toll in Haiti, where it dumped heavy rains on northern towns and cities already inundated and struck by huge mudslides from three previous storms.

One hundred and one dead bodies have been found since yesterday in Gonaives, the Haitian city hardest hit by Tropical Storm Hanna and Hurricane Ike, Vicky Delore-Ndjeuga, a spokesman for the UN Mission in Haiti, said.

"As the floodwaters recede, we found three more bodies in the city," Delore-Ndjeuga said. "The total is now 101 dead."

"If we don't find a way to deliver massive humanitarian aid, we will see fights and riots that will kill more people than the cyclone did."

[Miami101]

Wow This was very bad....I had to rush money to my family.

Now I have to check on how they are doing...try to help them some more. In Miami the wind is crazy, and Keys west is having a bad time.....................

[Miami101]

Hey Ken

The reason Haiti has more dead is because the people do not leave to safer locations. This is because they feel someone will break into the house they live. In Cuba the goverment save you have to move the people say where to:

Also they pratice moving large amounts of people before Hurricane session.