Caught in a Hurricane in Havana

Since I was leaving Montreal and saw the airfare to Havana was super, super cheap, I thought why not. I had enjoyed Havana so much my previous and first -trip, I figured it might be great to return to island. The first couple of days were lovely. The hotel I found was cheap (with breakfast included) and my room had a balcony that overlooked the Malecon.

After getting settled, I ventured out and looked around. Not much had changed since my last trip. I mingled with people at the peso stores, tried to make understandable conversation with those who thought I spoke fluent Spanish (I don’t, but I can get by), visited Old Havana and the famed Havana Cathedral to light a candle for a friend’s mother.

Once back in my room, I watched TV, as the hotel had cable and picked up some shows from the U.S via Canada. And it had CNN.

Oh no, a storm, maybe a hurricane was headed for the island, near Havana. Hurricane Wilma was due to, if not hit directly, cause some damage. Right away, Fidel Castro was on local TV, on a news roundtable program he appears on twice a week. This time he was joined by the country’s head meteorologist and some military guy. While I couldn't make everything out, I caught enough between the journalist’s questions to Castro and the other guests and Castor's own questions to the other two on the panel.

They pulled out maps of the country and weather maps, pointed to this and that. From what I could understand Havana was under hurricane watch. They would start evacuating other areas to higher ground by bus. Havana didn’t need to evacuate.

Hotel maintenance came to my room and boarded up my balcony shut. I was still not convinced the storm would be that bad; they however took it very seriously. The next morning as I walked down the street, I saw government buses loaded with hospital patients presumably heading to safer ground. All around town, stores had taped up or boarded their windows almost instantaneously. It rained in brief showers off and on. But it didn’t seem like a bad storm--that was until I woke up in pitch blackness the next morning. The electricity had gone out. The phone wasn't working. I felt my way down the hall, then down the stairs to the reception area where everyone was on cell phones. They were just sending someone up to get me, they said. The hotel was shutting down. They offered to get me a room at a sister hotel that still had electricity, but I figured I try my luck elsewhere as I didn't really like to the other hotel, which was in Old Havana but on a narrow, noisy street.

Still I didn't see the fuss; the rain hadn’t been that heavy. Then I stepped outside and saw what must have been a hundred folk starring down to the Malecon sea wall with their mouths all agape. The waves were enormous. The sea had knocked down some of the concrete stone wall and was steadily flooding the street. It was actually amazing to see. The waves with such force yet so beautiful. Needless to say, I went further in town. I found a nice hotel--though more expensive--in the artsy area of Vedado. I turned on local TV and saw that the area were I was earlier had totally flooded and was under about five feet or more of water. That was just in a matter of an hour or two. And much of Old Havana along the sea wall had lost electricity--even some of the pricier hotels.

This couldn’t be good, I thought. But I was tired. I found some dinner--at what seemed like the only diner open--and went to sleep. The next day, though the tide was still strong and many of those who lived on the Malecon had their homes flooded and lost all their furniture, etc., repair was already on. People were fixing their doors, carting out soaked couches, beds.

Soldiers lined the street to keep people from the broken sea barrier while crews rebuilt the wall, fixed the street, even repainted light posts and replanted flowers along the walk. Back at the hotel, on CNN they announced that Fidel Castro for the first time that anyone could remember in recent history had agreed to allow the U.S. to send people to possibly aid the country in fixing the hurricane damage. That didn't sound right. The damage was almost repaired it seemed.

The next day I was already able to return to my original hotel. The hotel kitchen was down, but everything else was up and running. Cars were still not allowed on the Malecon but most--if not all--of the damage wall had been repaired. People were allowed to walk next to the wall again, in some areas couples--as usual--were back to strolling along it and making out. People were already back to fishing. That night Castro was on the news program again. This time he seemed a bit angry, though he made several jokes. He was pointing out that Cuba had asked the U.S. during Hurricane Katrina if Cuba could send 1,600 doctors down, as Castro said, to "aid the poor and black, the forgotten people" in New Orleans. The U.S. apparently turned him down. And no, he said, he did not ask the U.S. for money. He did say they could visit. Then he went though a long list (he read from a sheet of paper) of countries Cuba has given money to or medical aid to because of natural disaster--nearly every African and Caribbean country as well as Mexico and other Latin American countries. He called people on a cell phone in other countries, the minister of this place, of that place, discussing the storm and if they needed help, etc.

A few days later I returned home and saw on CNN that the U.S. had canceled its trip to Cuba. It seems they say they were “tricked.” Castro, said U.S. officials, didn’t want help; he wanted to use the trip as a political ploy to create a worldwide natural disaster relief organization with Cuba as the head. The U.S., officials said, weren’t going to fall for that. I knew something sounded strange; what sort of help could Cuba need when most of the repairs had already been done. And, was the U.S. that blind—or maybe just eager to be needed by Cuba? The U.S. Interest Section in Cuba is right on the Malecon. The U.S. officials in that office--in the heart of Havana's damaged area--must have seen what I saw—a city up-and-running again after a major flood after just a few days.

Havana was definitely no New Orleans.