08 July 2005 16:16
...wouldn't hurt to pray for Cuba, Dennis is not being kind to them. I don't know the politics or the actual situation well enough to make accurate guesses, but it seems to me that category five hurricane destruction in Cuba might provide additional impetuous to lift US embargoes. Or at least get some Christian relief agencies in there to do a little subversive gospelizing.Culled this from a posting by Dr. Jeff Masters, a meteroligist who is also an ex-Hurricane Hunter (the guys who fly C130's through hurricanes):
Today will be the worst day in Cuba's modern history. Dennis is a worst-case hurricane following a worst-case path for the island. The storm is already punishing Cuba as it moves parallel to the island, subjecting much of the island to hurricane force winds and rainfall totals of 10 - 15 inches, and destroying much of the rich sugar cane fields and other crops. The situation will get much worse tonight when the storm makes landfall, pushing a storm surge of 20 feet or higher onto a long section of the coast. Dennis will pass near Havana, the most heavily populated part of the island. Although loss of life will be low thanks to Cuba's excellent civil defense system, the destruction of buildings will probably be the worst in Cuba's history. Building collapses are common in Cuba without having hurricane winds battering the cities. Dennis will damage or destroy hundreds of thousands of buildings, leaving a large percentage of Cuba's population homeless. Lack of fresh water and electricity will be serious problems, and Cuba's political stability could well be threatened by the scope of what is likely to be its greatest disaster in modern history. (wunderground.com)
...I don't know how much of an expert this Dr. Masters is, but the above doesn't seem to need much verification. radar is showing dennis smack dab over cuba, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what kind of damage that's going to do to a flat carribean island used to gentle breezes and sunshine....
I did hear on the radio this morning that the Cuban government managed to evacuate 200,000 people from the hurricane's path. The reporter was in awe, and compared it to the effort it would take to move a similar number of people on Jamaica (a tenth of the total population he noted). He started to dig himself a hole while trying to describe just why the Cuban government could accomplish this, noticed how deep his hole was getting, decided that calling the Cuban government a dictatorship and describing their enforcement techniques wasn't something he really wanted to do over the air on a meterological segement of the news, backpedaled hastily while managing to maintain about half his dignity, then brought the helm over ten points to take aim at a safer subject: complaining guardedly (or commenting ruefully) about the unwillingness of Jamaicans to obey evacuation orders. "They prefer instead," he continued, "to risk their property and lives weathering the storm rather than move to safety and risk losing their property to other...Jamaicans" (paraphrase in which he was refering specifically to fishermen from Portmore area remaining on the causway to guard their boats).
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