Hurricane planning pays off by saving lives in Cuba
- From: periodistalibre@xxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 13 Sep 2008 07:45:18 -0700 (PDT)
KEEBLE McFARLANE /
The Jamaica Observer /
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/html/20080912T220000-0500_140103_OBS_HURRICANE_PLANNING_PAYS_OFF_BY_SAVING_LIVES.asp
Saturday, September 13, 2008 /
There are two places in the Western Hemisphere which are almost
guaranteed to be hit by a hurricane each year. Cuba, that slim,
elongated island running roughly northwest to southeast, and Florida,
the somewhat larger, spear-shaped state jabbing southwards towards it,
lie athwart the western end of the Caribbean and the Atlantic, right
in the path of most storms. This year so far is ranked as the seventh
most active for tropical storms since 1950, and although Florida has
been hit only once - by Tropical Storm Fay, the season is only half-
way through. Another country which sometimes gets hit has suffered
gravely this year, and of all, Haiti is the least able to withstand
the fury these storms can unleash.
In less than a month, four storms struck from three sides. First, it
was Fay, which raged in through its neighbour, the Dominican Republic,
leaving the countryside there ravaged and four deaths, from flooding.
The Dominican Republic has a thriving agricultural base and stretches
of forest, so there is the normal vegetative cover to help mitigate
the damage. In Haiti, the story is different. The country is so poor
that its 10 million people have stripped away nearly all the forest
cover to burn as fuel, leaving the terrain subject to serious flooding
and scouring from torrential rains.
After Fay came Hanna, then Gustav from the south, and last week, Ike,
which tore in from the Atlantic through the Turks and Caicos and the
Bahamas. As the waist-deep waters subsided, bodies were found by the
dozen, and the actual total will never be known. Hundreds of
thousands, who have the most basic living accommodation, were left
homeless. In Cuba's case, Fay crossed through the province of Matanzas
dumping heavy rain, and then just a few days ago two storms struck in
the course of a week - Gustav, after drenching Jamaica, and Ike, which
ran from one end of the island to the other before moving off into the
Gulf of Mexico to gain strength and cause more trouble.
The head of Cuba's meteorological service, José Rubiera, says it's
been a very unusual situation: "In all of Cuba's history, we have
never had two hurricanes this close together." These violent natural
manifestations have left widespread devastation in addition to the
toll in human lives. Cuba's sugar, banana and tobacco crops have been
severely affected, and in Haiti, where farming is largely of the
subsistence variety, the desperately poor people will now have to rely
on aid from abroad.
The experiences of the two countries have revealed a stark difference:
while both have suffered similar devastation, Haiti has lost more than
350 lives by official estimate, while only four Cubans have died and
just a few injured. The difference - which applies to a lesser extent
to Jamaica and the Dominican Republic - is in the emergency
preparation systems. Haiti has practically none, while Jamaica and the
Dominican Republic have such systems, but these have a long way to go
to catch up with Cuba's.
In 1963, Hurricane Flora ravaged Haiti and Cuba, leaving some 7,000
people dead. It spent four days in Cuba, where the Castro revolution
was then only four years old, and the response was haphazard. As a
result of that experience, the Cubans began building a proper disaster-
response system.
But it was still weak in the area of forecasting, and during the 1970s
and 80s, hurricane bulletins were described as coming from the
"Instituto de Mentirologia", or Institute for the Study of Lies. It
was a clever pun, since meterologia - the Spanish word for the study
of weather - sounds very much like "mentirologia" (mentira means
"lie").
After that the government increased the number of weather-reporting
stations and invested in modern equipment, and switched to trained
meteorologists instead of announcers to present forecasts on
television. By 1999 the met service was predicting storms with an
accuracy of 89 to 92 per cent, the same level as in the US and Europe.
Last year, the Centre for International Policy, a Washington-based
study group, brought together some Cuban and US hurricane specialists
to share knowledge of how to deal with responding to hurricanes. In
April of this year, the CIP organised a trip to Cuba for nine US
specialists to hear directly from the people there how they respond to
killer storms.
While the social and political systems of the two countries are quite
different, the Americans still felt the Cubans had things to teach
them. The most important is that the Cuban hurricane response system
is based on saving lives above property. The Cubans also begin early,
starting in elementary school with education about hurricanes and
staging regular drills on just what to do. Another factor is that
because everyone has experienced a storm, they take these things
seriously.
Shelters are clearly demarcated and everyone knows where to go when an
alert is proclaimed. Arrangements are made for people who have special
needs, such as medicines, diets or physical aids. Emergency stockpiles
of food and medical supplies are strategically placed in preparation
for the hurricane season. After a storm, the government evaluates the
damage and replaces or repairs the damage according to priority. The
system doesn't always work as intended, but the promise of replacing
lost items and the high survival rate helps Cubans to prepare
psychologically for disasters.
In a disaster report in 2002, the International Federation of the Red
Cross stated that "Cuba's success in saving lives through timely
evacuation when Hurricane Michelle struck in November 2001 gives us a
model of effective government-driven disaster preparedness." During
the Ike experience, about 1.5 million people were moved to shelters or
to the more secure homes of family and neighbours, and there were only
four deaths. Taken against the estimated US$4-billion in physical
damage, that is a remarkable achievement.
keeble.mack@xxxxxxxxxxxx
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