Cuba's aging buildings tumble down in Hurricane Ike's wake

Cuba's aging buildings tumble down in Hurricane Ike's wake
Posted on Thu, Sep. 11, 2008
BY MIAMI HERALD STAFF
Cuba@MiamiHerald.com

HAVANA --
The bricks were exposed, scaffolding held up the roof, and there were
huge holes inside the walls. But the family living in the crumbling
building on Cuba's famed Malecón at Crespo Street thought it was safe to
return home Wednesday. Hurricane Ike had finally left the island and
headed out to sea.

They were wrong.

Soaked by Ike's rains and battered by decades of neglect, the building
collapsed with one of its occupants -- a father -- still inside, making
him the fifth storm-related casualty on the island this week, according
to media reports.

Men in hard hats furiously moved rubble in wheelbarrows in the hopes of
finding him alive.

''I pulled a boy this high from the rubble,'' a man named Pedro, holding
his hand up to his chest, told The Miami Herald. 'He was crying -- `My
dad. Please help my dad' -- but I couldn't get him out. He's still in
there.''

Firefighter Lt. Col. Rolando Menéndez told The Associated Press that the
man had returned to his seaside home without official approval, and a
concrete piece of the building's fourth floor slipped loose and fell on him.

Neighbors told The Miami Herald that even though Ike battered eastern
Cuba before it finally left the island Tuesday, the worst for Havana
comes now: when buildings collapse from the weight of the wet cement.

Ike was still in the Gulf of Mexico Wednesday night, barreling toward
the Texas coast. The Category 2 storm was expected to intensify,
possibly to a Category 4, before it makes landfall by the weekend.

In Cuba, Ike left a deep scar.

200,000 DESTROYED

The Cuban Housing Institute said 200,000 homes nationwide were damaged,
including 30,000 total losses and the majority of the others roofless.
Adding the houses damaged by Hurricane Gustav when it walloped Cuba's
western province Aug. 30, the tally comes to 320,000 -- a staggering
figure in a nation already enduring a woeful housing shortage.

So much housing is in precarious shape that 2.6 million people -- nearly
a quarter of the country's population -- left their homes in advance of
the storm. In Havana province, 115,408 people evacuated.

In the nation's capital so far, 67 buildings have totally or partially
collapsed, so civil defense official Luis C. Gongora said on the Mesa
Redonda news show. Four aged buildings in a single block crumbled into
rubble, The AP reported.

Cuban television showed footage of a collapsed building and police
escorting out a woman and her baby.

Experts say at least 70 percent of Havana's housing stock is unsafe,
meaning that in the United States, they would be condemned.

The 500-year-old Cuban capital holds the world's largest collection of
Spanish colonial buildings, but many are so deteriorated that they
regularly crumble under heavy rainfall. Buildings erected in this
century are in even worse condition, Florida International University
architecture professor Nicolas Quintana said.

About 1,400 decaying buildings must be abandoned each year for fear of
collapse.

Hurricane Dennis damaged 1,800 homes in Havana alone, and Lili in 2002
ruined 15,000 nationwide. In 2004, 65 collapsed from the weight of Charley.

''That building has been a wreck since 1990 -- for 18 years we've been
asking to have it repaired,'' one resident of the collapsed building
where the father was trapped told The Miami Herald Wednesday. ``Parts of
the roof have fallen twice, once when my wife was pregnant. It's a lack
of respect to make us live there.''

Residents learned the hard way to walk in the street.

''You can't walk on the sidewalk,'' said one Old Havana resident named
Carmen, ``because chunks of the building come falling.''

The government has been on a mission in the past years to renovate many
buildings, particularly ones in tourist areas. Still, too many buildings
are held up by makeshift props.

''I see stars every night when I sleep,'' said Roberto, who lost his
roof to the storm. ``The rain ruined my furniture, and I spent the
morning bailing out water.''

Homes in the eastern provinces bore the brunt of Ike's force. In
Camagüey province alone, officials said, 40,000 homes lost their roofs.
In Santiago de Cuba, 3,358 homes were affected, 538 totally and 441
partially collapsed. In the town of Nuevitas, 4,500 homes were damaged.

In Baracoa, remains from an old cemetery had come out of coffins and
into Calixto García Street, according to Juan Antonio Monet, a human
rights activist.

''The strong rains flooded the Cemetery de Baracoa and remains just
started popping out of their resting places,'' Monet said. ``Here it has
been disastrous. In one block in the Matas neighborhood, there are five
houses in a row that all collapsed.''

He said 11 of his city's 28 neighborhoods were destroyed.

''On some streets,'' Monet said, ``all you see is ruins.''

RESERVOIRS FILLING

Authorities said hundreds of thousands of people, particularly in Granma
province, were still in shelters as reservoirs filled to dangerous
levels. In the western province of Pinar del Río, struck by storms twice
in 10 days, more than 6,000 people were evacuated Wednesday as rivers
began to overflow, civil defense official Olga Lidia Tapia said on the
nightly news.

Cuban television broadcast dramatic aerial views of Holguín province,
where every building was roofless. In Holguín alone, 37,000 homes were
destroyed and 8,600 acres of crops were lost.

''What's been seen until now is only the tip of the iceberg of what has
occurred,'' said Yosvani Anzaro, an independent journalist in San
Germán, a town in Holguín. ``There are towns that have totally
disappeared and others that will never be the same, since most of the
houses are damaged or destroyed.''

Marlene Cruz, 37, went by bike to Caletone, a beach town where she had a
home. Where there had been hundreds of houses, she counted a dozen still
standing.

''It was the scene after a bombing, like I have seen in the movies,''
Cruz told El Nuevo Herald by telephone. ``I started to sob inconsolably.''

The name of the correspondent who filed this report is being withheld
because the reporter lacks the journalism visa required by the Cuban
government to report from the island. Additional reporting was conducted
in Miami by staff writers Frances Robles, Elaine de Valle and Patricia
Mazzei, and El Nuevo Herald staff writer Wilfredo Cancio.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/cuba/story/681529.html