Can't imagine their suffering afterwards. Recycling nails?
Posted on 09/19/2004 12:53:07 PM PDT by Graybeard58
The poundings that Florida and central Gulf Coast have taken from hurricanes this summer have that region reeling. The widespread damage to homes and businesses, combined with the housing-construction boom in Florida, has left building materials in short supply. Lumber, cement, shingles and the like are sold as soon as they're unloaded from delivery trucks.
But the U.S. economy has the strength and Americans have the determination and wherewithal to withstand almost anything that deadly storms might dish out. In the end, the people will endure and life will return to normal.
While Americans are fixated on the hurt that hurricanes put on the Southeast, they haven't been told very much about the hardships that hurricanes Charley and Ivan inflicted on Cuba. Some of the best reporting of conditions there has come from Vanessa Bauza, Havana correspondent for the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
Charley damaged more than 70,000 homes, destroyed crops, left hundreds homeless and knocked out power to untold thousands for weeks.
In the fishing village of Cajio, 45 miles south of Havana, waves "crashed over rooftops, ripping wooden homes straight from ground and leaving behind a surreal checkerboard of concrete floors," she wrote. "As the fiercest storm to strike Cajio in 60 years, Charley spared only 10 of the village's 300 homes. More than 1,200 residents evacuated with little more than the clothes on their backs."
Ms. Bauza reported on an Ivan evacuee whose house was "blown to bits" by Charley. She observed how Ivan destroyed wooden homes along the coast and reduced furniture "to piles of scrap wood soaked with seaweed." Fisherman Luis Izquierdo of Cortés told her, "It will be a long time until we have homes again."
As people scavenged the debris of a house in Cortés, she met Alvaro Camero: "'A lot of people have come through here looking for nails and boards,' he said as he sifted through the rubble, pulling rusted nails from boards and placing them in a small dish. 'We don't have a hardware store.'" Mr. Camero would use those rusty nails repair his own home.
Just two years ago, Cuba suffered widespread devastation from hurricanes Lili and Isadore, and the poorest Cubans had not recovered fully when Charley and Ivan struck. Government officials surveyed the damage in 2002, but did nothing to help the people rebuild. Collectivism apparently doesn't extend beyond the halls of government in Havana.
Still, against all reason, Juana Maria Ayala, who as a cafeteria worker makes $5 a month (enough to buy one sack of cement on the black market), expects "the state to help me repair my house." The power of propaganda is awesome.
Ms. Bauza's most telling anecdote was Hugo Olay, whose 103-year-old wooden house in Cortés was heavily damaged by Charley. "Inside, his cabinets and chairs were piled like a heap of scrap wood. Crabs clung to crevices in the walls. Olay said he would rely on his mother and siblings, who live in Miami, to send money to help him to recover from the damage."
Fidel Castro will have none of that. Should the Bush administration offer humanitarian aid, he proclaimed, "We won't accept a penny from them." In his communist utopia, the long-suffering Cuban people apparently haven't suffered enough. In Castro's warped world, the homeless and the hungry don't need no stinkin' U.S. dollars.
Yuppers. Communism is a failed system that kills people.
Surely Chavez will send lots of aid.
/s
Can't imagine their suffering afterwards. Recycling nails?
fyi
As the man said, "We don't have a hardware store"
That would be going from the frying pan into the fire.
Castro, all my people need is my communist teets! Viva la teets!
Hillary singing the praises of Castro, Viva la Castro!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.