Poverty, not Gustav, brings deaths to Caribbean

While Gustav was still a tropical storm, with winds less than 70 miles per hour but with heavy rain, it brushed by the Dominican Republic. It then strengthened to a category 1 hurricane—out of a possible 5—as it passed over southeastern and southwestern Haiti. It strengthened more as it passed over Jamaica and the Cayman Islands.

By the time the storm hit Cuba, it was a category 4 hurricane with 140-mph winds. In the western Cuban town of Paso Real del San Diego, gusts reached 212 mph, a new national record, according to a spokesperson at the Cuban Institute of Meteorology. (MSNBC.com)

It raged across Cuba’s Isle of Youth, then over western Cuba, but largely spared Havana and its 2 million people before heading north through the Gulf of Mexico towards the United States.

Of the 90 or so deaths reported in Gustav’s passage through the Caribbean, about 75 were in Haiti, eight in the Dominican Republic and eight in Jamaica. Not one death was reported in Cuba, though some people were injured by wind-blown debris.

The number of reported dead in Haiti may go much higher. “There are regions affected by the storm that our teams have not been able to reach,” civil protection director Alta Jean-Baptiste told reporters in Port-au-Prince, adding that most of the deaths occurred in Haiti’s southeast.

“The majority of victims died when their houses collapsed, or were killed by falling trees. Others drowned when they tried to cross swollen rivers,” she said. Mudslides, very common in Haiti’s deforested countryside, undoubtedly claimed a number of victims.

Haiti is by far the poorest country of those hit by Gustav. Even if the government wanted to do an evacuation, it doesn’t have buses to move people nor enough paved roads to accommodate the buses. And even if it had the roads and buses, it would need buildings to shelter and feed masses of people, something else Haiti lacks.

The more developed capitalist countries of the U.S. and Europe have deliberately punished Haiti’s economy ever since a successful slave revolution there defeated French colonial rule in the early 1800s.

The majority of people in Cuba were also once very poor. But since its socialist revolution in 1959, Cuba has concentrated on the health and development of its people. Before the hurricane hit, it evacuated 250,000 people as a precaution. Civil defense committees visit each household to announce an evacuation is coming, then come again to make sure everyone gets out safely, including the elderly and disabled.

Communities are evacuated together and know where they are going, so families can hook up and stay together. Doctors in the community evacuate with their patients so they can guarantee insulin and other medicines are available.

Cuba suffered significant physical damage to its crops and buildings from this extremely violent storm, but as of noon, Sept. 1, no loss of life had been reported.