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A season to remember, but who will learn Cuba’s lesson?
By Alejandro Gonzalez

It has been one of the most deadly, destructive and costly hurricane seasons on record, responsible for hundreds of billions of US dollars in damage to the region and around 2,830 lives lost – and still counting.

The record-breaking 2005 Atlantic hurricane season has had 26 tropical storms, 14 of which became hurricanes – the most destructive of which were Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Stan ­and Wilma – which tore through the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico exposing the shortcomings of disaster planning across the region.

Perhaps the most shocking of this year’s hurricanes was Katrina in August, not just because of the incredible devastation and loss of life that it caused, but because it happened in the USA – the richest and most technologically advanced country in the world.

The administration of President George W Bush was severely embarrassed in the hurricane’s aftermath as televised images of New Orleans were beamed around the world showing dead bodies floating in floodwaters and masses of hungry, thirsty survivors – mostly poor and black – abandoned for many days in increasingly desperate circumstances.

Even though there were early hurricane warnings for Katrina, US officials proved incapable of putting together a proper evacuation strategy. Instead residents were told to devise their own evacuation plans, despite the fact that census data revealed that around 20 per cent of households in the disaster area had no car and nearly 25 per cent were living below the poverty line.

The result: 1,325 dead (according to official figures), a million displaced residents and a city in anarchy. There also remain suspicions that the death toll is still grossly understated with USA Today reporting in November that of the 6,644 persons who still remained unaccounted for in the hurricane’s aftermath, 1,300 were feared dead, suggesting that the real death toll is significantly higher than officially acknowledged.

One of Katrina’s greatest tragedies was that most who died were not killed by the hurricane itself, but drowned in the floods that followed (another event that was predicted, as 80 per cent of the city is below sea level) or died while waiting for food, water and medical attention to arrive.

Storm preparedness across Central America and Mexico was also exposed in October when Hurricane Stan caused severe flooding and mudslides in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras and southern Mexico, resulting in a death toll of 1,153 across the affected areas.

But consider the 2005 hurricane experience of the poor island-nation of Cuba – located in the hub of Caribbean hurricane activity – which faired comparatively better, despite being hit hard by Dennis and Wilma.

Early in the season, Hurricane Dennis hit Cuba twice making landfall in central Cuba in July, killing 16 people and damaging or destroying more than 120,000 homes.  Local authorities evacuated 1.5 million people and 475,000 animals in anticipation of Dennis.

Wilma then hit Cuba in late October with 10 days of consecutive rainfall, flooding 11 of Cuba’s 14 provinces, but not a single direct death was attributed to the hurricane. Preparations resulted in over 600,000 people being evacuated across the island, according to the Cuban National Defence Council.

Cuba’s 2005 response wasn’t special, as the previous year the country’s government evacuated around one-and-a-half million people (more than 10 per cent of its population) from Hurricane Ivan’s path, well ahead of that storm finding land. No lives were lost despite an estimated 20,000 homes destroyed. And there was a similar story in 2001 when the most powerful storm since 1944 hit the island.

Hurricanes might be part of Cuba’s ‘geographic destiny’, but it’s a fate they’ve not resigned themselves to suffer gladly. This is despite finding themselves in the midst of economic depression, “el bloqueo” and being subject to severe shortages of petrol and a public transport infrastructure with which to carry residents to safety. 

Nevertheless, Cuba can boast an impressive record in safeguarding its residents against natural disasters.  Of the six major hurricanes that have hit Cuba between 1996 and 2002 a total of only 16 people have died. 

Could the tiny communist island have a few lessons to offer its neighbours? 

Experts say that Cuba, with its highly developed disaster preparedness policies, is leading the region in protecting its 11 million residents against predictable weather-related disasters.

“The Cuban government’s zero risk attitude to predictable disaster, its community mobilisation and awareness raising programmes are leading the way in the Caribbean,” said Xavier Castellanos, disaster preparedness expert with the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC).

“The Cuban government will not wait until the last 12 hours to act: experts issue public warnings when storms are five days out to sea and the government is willing to evacuate people three days before a hurricane strikes land to avoid loss of life,” said Castellanos.

According to a study by Oxfam America ‘Weathering the Storm: Lessons in Risk Reduction from Cuba’: “Cuba has a strong well-organised civil defence, an early warning system, well-equipped rescue teams, emergency stockpiles, and other resources.

“Such tangible assets are impressive, but if they were the only determining factor, then other wealthier countries such as the United States would have lower disaster death tolls,” the 2004 report argues.

The report identifies significant “intangible” qualities that explain why the Cuban system works so well.  “These include community mobilisation, solidarity, clear political commitment to safeguard human life, and a population that is ‘disaster aware’ and educated in the necessary action to be taken in event of disaster.

“The single most important thing about disaster response in Cuba is that people cooperate en masse,” the Oxfam report found.

Critics argue that the Cuban disaster model is dependent on a centralised system of government and wouldn’t work in other countries with a more neo-liberal regime, such as the US and most Caribbean islands.

But the IFRC’s Castellanos disagrees: “Zero risk is about awareness raising, empowering communities and government showing leadership and discipline before a hurricane hits,” all of which can be achieved irrespective of the style of government or economic model, he said.

In Cuba education plays a large part in explaining the island’s culture of safety, Cubans begin to learn about how to prepare for disaster at primary school and the entire country goes through MeteOro – a national hurricane simulation exercise at the end of May for a few days.

In Cuba residents living in high-risk areas know beforehand where to take refuge, be it in sturdy homes on high ground or in group shelters pre-stocked with food, water and medical supplies.

Year round community risk mapping means that local doctors know where the elderly, the infirmed, expectant mothers and other dependent members of the community are and town planners know which buildings and homes are unsafe – all of which makes for orderly evacuation.

It wasn’t always this way. The Cuban road to disaster mitigation had a wake-up call in 1963 when a severe hurricane claimed more than 1,000 lives, prompting the state to revamp its civil defence arrangements, which are finally winning some accolades.

In 2004 the United Nations International Secretariat for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) identified Cuba as a model for hurricane preparedness, saying: “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.”

To the benefit of all Cubans the next few years and decades ahead should see the island best placed in the Gulf of Mexico to withstand the worst hurricanes nature has to offer. This is particularly so given that sea surface temperatures in the Gulf (critical to how hurricanes form) are currently around half and one degree higher than average, which explain the high incidence of hurricane activity in recent times. With this trend expected to continue, the governments across the Caribbean basin and the US will be increasingly forced to face this issue or face large numbers of dead and millions of pounds worth of destruction than need not be necessary.

*This article originally appeared in “Cuba Si” – the quarterly magazine of FBU affiliated organisation Cuba Solidarity Campaign - in 2005. They can be contacted at campaigns@cuba-solidarity.org.uk or by phoning 0207 263 6452. Or visit their website: www.cuba-soldarity.org.uk