Thursday 04 December 2008, San José, Costa
Rica
CUBA:
Coastal Dwellers to
Relocate Away from the
Sea
By Dalia Acosta
SANTA CRUZ DEL SUR, Cuba (IPS) - She
was born, grew up and
lived all her life just
a few steps from the
sea, in the part of the
city that everyone knows
simply as La Playa (the
beach). Although she was
lucky enough to return
to a home and belongings
that withstood Hurricane
Paloma’s mighty waves,
Iramis Rodríguez has
made up her mind to move
inland.
"If they’ll take me,
I’ll go," the
30-year-old Santa Cruz
resident told IPS.
Rodríguez is part of the
janitorial staff in a
government facility
located "right here in
Santa Cruz," she says.
The one metre high storm
surge left its mark on
the walls of her house.
The roof took some
damage and the
mattresses and
appliances got wet, but
nothing that the sun
cannot fix. "Now, we
need to help those who
are in worse shape,
while we wait for a
permanent solution,"
says Rodríguez’s
husband, Ramón del
Campo.
The monument in memory
of the victims of the
Nov. 9, 1932 hurricane
-- the worst natural
disaster in the history
of Cuba -- is visible
from her door. Closer to
the coast stands a cross
marking the height
reached by the storm
surge that tragic day:
some six metres,
according to the few
survivors.
Some 3,000 people were
killed that day in 1932,
"stabbed" by all sorts
of objects that were
hurled through the air
by the powerful winds,
trapped inside their
homes, swallowed up by
the sea as it pulled
back, or scorched among
the debris burnt by
order of the authorities
who wanted to prevent an
epidemic at all costs.
This time, when the
families returned on
Nov. 11 to this town
located some 600
kilometres east of
Havana, the landscape
they found was both
similar and different to
the one left 76 years
ago. Dogs with glazed
eyes roamed streets that
had turned alien; here
and there an animal was
trapped under boards.
But the community had
survived.
The first line of
houses, along the sea,
had disappeared almost
completely. In some
places, nothing was
left, only part of the
foundations, as a
reminder that there had
once been a home there.
Not even the sturdiest
dwellings -- which had
been chosen by the
neighbours as a safe
place to store their
refrigerators -- were
left standing.
"This is like the 1932
hurricane without the
death toll," Alicia
Reitor, 58, remarked to
IPS. Reitor was part of
the first Catholic
Church brigades that
came to the coastal area
to bring "some material
aid, but most of all to
lend spiritual support
to these people who have
lost everything," she
said.
More than 20,000 people
were evacuated from
Santa Cruz del Sur, a
municipality of 49,900
people, as Hurricane
Paloma -- the third
major hurricane to hit
Cuba this year --
approached. While in
1932, the entire town
was left waiting for an
evacuation train that
never arrived, this time
not a single person
stayed back in the poor
district of La Playa.
When Paloma struck, it
damaged 9,022 homes:
1,155 were totally
destroyed, 1,422
partially wrecked, and
1,227 lost their roofs.
Of the 480 houses in La
Playa, about half were
completely razed, and
the ones that were left
standing all suffered
damages to some degree.
WEATHERING THE STORM
Fernando Zamora, 51, had
decided with his family
that he would go back to
their house to make sure
that their most
important possessions
were secured. He planned
to take a few things to
a safer place: the
refrigerator, the
television set, and
maybe their new living
room furniture, for
which they had made so
many sacrifices to buy.
A worker at a shrimp
farming company, Zamora
spent the hours prior to
the arrival of Hurricane
Paloma helping in the
evacuation, as he is a
member of the Municipal
Defence Council. "As it
turned out, I couldn’t
make it in time to get
our things, but I was
sure the house would
survive," he told IPS.
When they came back
three days later, the
only things the family
could salvage from the
wreckage were a few
pots, some clothes and
the odd photograph.
Zamora, like Ramón del
Campo and so many other
men, felt that they had
to try to salvage the
unsalvageable, putting
up makeshift walls and
roofs to live through
the aftermath.
The women recovered
clothes from the mud and
the water’s edge, set up
collective kitchens to
cook meals with the free
food distributed by the
government and some
local ingredients, took
care of the pets and
small livestock and
tried as much as
possible to keep the
children from feeling
the effects of the
disaster.
"Men and women deal with
this situation
differently. The women
turn to the doctors to
talk, they express what
they’re feeling. The men
stay back; it’s like
they don’t want to show
that this is affecting
them emotionally. This
way of coping could be
worse," psychiatrist
Daysi Roque told IPS.
Roque was part of a
group of 20 specialists,
including psychiatrists,
psychologists,
occupational therapists,
and nurses, that
travelled to Santa Cruz
del Sur four days after
Hurricane Paloma hit to
conduct an emergency
assessment, with the aim
of detecting any cases
of people affected by
trauma or severely
distressed.
"There are different
ways of helping people
deal with what they’re
going through:
counselling, talking,
listening, and,
especially, letting them
know that we’re always
going to be there for
them," Yoandro Ávalo
said to IPS. Ávalo was
part of the Cuban Red
Cross team that
travelled to Santa Cruz
del Sur to help with the
evacuation and the
post-disaster recovery
efforts.
Cuba has suffered an
estimated 10 billion
dollars in losses from
the damages caused by
hurricanes Gustav, Ike
and Paloma, when they
stormed through the
island on Aug. 30, Sept.
8-9, and Nov. 9,
respectively. But
statistics say nothing
of all the memories the
hurricanes took with
them: family
photographs, children’s
toys, books
painstakingly collected
by a local teacher
throughout her life.
FAREWELL TO THE SEA
"If you were given the
chance to leave this
place, would you go?"
IPS asked more than 15
La Playa residents. The
answer, in a sad but
firm tone, was
invariably yes.
That seems to be the
only solution possible
for communities like
Santa Cruz del Sur,
Cajío, Guanimar, or so
many others, which year
after year live under
the threat posed by the
sea. In 2002, an
official report
calculated that there
were 244 neighbourhoods,
villages or towns, home
to 1.4 million people,
that were vulnerable to
coastal floods.
"These are areas located
one metre below the mean
sea level and at a
distance of less than
one thousand metres from
the coastline,"
according to the report
presented by Cuba at a
regional meeting on
"Local Management and
Risk Reduction within
Human Settlements in the
Caribbean Basin".
With the increase in
cyclone intensity and
sea-level rise
projections, the Cuban
government has
recognised that the only
solution for these
communities is to
relocate further inland.
The decision is already
being implemented in
Santa Cruz del Sur, with
the construction of
temporary housing for
those left homeless by
the hurricane.
The site, three
kilometres from La
Playa, is already being
conditioned to build
several apartment
buildings, for the
relocation of local
residents.
"We grew up hearing
stories of the 1932
hurricane, but we never
thought that something
like that could ever
happen again. We had
never lived in fear of
the sea, but now things
have changed. We have to
go because what happened
here could happen
again," the
twice-Olympic medallist
in canoeing Ibrahím
Rojas told IPS.
Rojas no longer lives in
Santa Cruz del Sur, but
he came back to his
childhood home to help
his mother rebuild her
house. "This was
supposed to be the place
where she was going to
spend her old age, and
now she can’t wait to
move," he said "When we
saw what had happened …
it was the most painful
thing we ever felt."
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