Hurricane Gustav Slams Cuba's Tobacco Region

Hurricane Gustav Slams Cuba's Tobacco Region

Posted: Monday, September 01, 2008

By David Savona and James Suckling

Updated 5:09 p.m., Tuesday

AP photo by Javier Galeano
Hurricane Gustav tore through Cuba this weekend. While no deaths were
reported, it left the town of Los Palacios (pictured) in ruins.
Hurricane Gustav swept across Cuba's famed Pinar del Río tobacco growing
region on August 30—with wind gusts as high as 200 miles per
hour—collapsing thousands of tobacco curing barns, according to Cuban
News Agency. It was the strongest storm to hit the island in 50 years.

Cuba reported no deaths due to Gustav, which was a category four storm
at the time of landfall, with sustained winds of 140 miles per hour, but
the storm ripped roofs off homes and was blamed for the collapse of
nearly 3,500 tobacco curing barns, or casas de tobaccos, according to
the report. Cuban officials evacuated thousands from the coast in
western Cuba, which was in the storm's path. Hundreds of schools were
damaged and 86,000 homes were destroyed or partially destroyed.

Sources in Cuba said that the winds were most powerful in the Viñales
region of Cuba, and that the best growing areas on the island, San Juan
and San Luis, were spared from the worst of the hurricane. None of the
damaged barns were in San Juan or San Luis.

Tobacco farmers throughout the Caribbean and Central America typically
do not plant during the hurricane season, and it was too early in the
year for tobacco plants or even seedlings to be in the ground. Cuban
workers were already out working on fixing the barns to prepare for the
upcoming harvest.

Gustav weakened considerably as it moved north toward the United States,
where it made landfall in southern Louisiana. Damage there was far less
than originally feared. This afternoon, it was a tropical depression
over Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas.

The storm has been blamed for more than 100 deaths since it formed on
August 25.

Hurricanes have changed the history of the cigar industry. Hurricane
Gilbert tore the roof off the Royal Jamaica factory in Jamaica in 1988,
which resulted in the brand's production being moved to the Dominican
Republic, and repeated hurricane strikes in the early 1990s devastated
the Key West cigar industry.

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