Top Story
UN Lauds Cuba as Model
Of Hurricane Preparedness
The Numbers Game
Statistics, especially the grand, hard-to-fathom kind, have a tendency to numb, becoming just another string of numbers. Some of the statistics related to Cuba's hurricane preparedness and response strategy however, are truly dazzling and speak for themselves, including these from Hurricane Ivan:
Sustained winds were clocked at 124 mph; gusts reached over 161 mph
In just 24 hours, 6 inches of rain fell in the town of Isabel Rubio; the 24-hour record for this hurricane
In the aftermath, 5,296,500 cubic feet of solid waste filled Havana´s streets; garbage brigades were collecting up to 1,059,300 cubic feet daily
Early evacuation plan allows 100,000 people to be evacuated safely in less than 3 hours
2492 evacuation centers were set up
1,898,396 people were evacuated (that's more than 15% of the total population)
Of those evacuated, fully 78% or 1,471,058 people, were sheltered in the homes of family, friends or neighbors.
8,026 tourists were transferred to safe areas
359,644 boarding school students were transferred to their homes
1,898,160 farm animals in vulnerable areas were moved to safer ground
By Conner Gorry
Staccato bursts of hammer fall punctuated the air, every available jug, bucket and bottle was filled with potable water and radios and televisions beamed the latest from the Cuban Institute of Meteorology into homes and workplaces countrywide. Mean while, evacuation centers were readied to receive tens of thousands, roofs were cleared of debris, farm animals were transferred to safe areas and citrus was picked at lightening speed.
So went the several days of preparation for Hurricane Ivan, the most powerful hurricane to hit Cuba in 50 years and the fifth most powerful to ever strike the Caribbean. Despite sustained winds of over 124mph and nearly 2 million people evacuated, there was zero loss of life and no injuries, leading the United Nations to praise Cuba as a model for the world in disaster preparedness.
According to Salvano Briceño, Director of the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, “the Cuban way could easily be applied to other countries with similar economic conditions, and even in countries with greater resources that do not manage to protect their population as well as Cuba does.”
Reports indicate that 52 people died in the United States and at least 70 in the Caribbean during Hurricane Ivan.
Practice Makes Almost Perfect
Coming just a month after Hurricane Charley ripped through Havana, killing four and causing more than US$1 billion worth of damage to property and crops, Ivan, a category 5 hurricane, was met with a monumental preparation program that could serve as a global model. Experts point to several facets of the comprehensive Cuban strategy that allowed the small, developing country to limit damage and weather the storm with no loss of human life.
Foremost is the political will of the Cuban government to prioritize disaster preparedness and work together with citizens to design and implement a comprehensive risk reduction program. This includes emergency plans for the national, provincial, municipal and local levels, updated annually. Shaping and implementing these plans falls largely to a net work of Civil Defense units which divide disaster preparedness into four specific phases: informative, alert, alarm and recovery.
The commitment to saving human lives is first priority in the Cuban strategy. Primarily, this is achieved through education from an early age about the dangers associated with hurricanes and how to prepare and act in the event of one; a reliable early warning system that disseminates information leading up to a hurricane, but also during and after; and early evacuation. This last is critical, as hazard assessment specialists point to the refusal to evacuate as a major cause of death in hurricane situations. Indeed, refusal to evacuate partly explains why Florida suffered more loss of life than Cuba in recent hurricanes, including Charley, when four people died in Cuba, while 27 perished in Florida. According to Oxfam America's exhaustive report entitled Weathering the Storm: Lessons in Risk Reduction in Cuba, " Cuba's success in saving lives through timely evacuation when a hurricane strikes is a model of effective, government-driven disaster preparedness." |
