Cuba braces itself for hurricane Ivan

[JoFerret]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/naturaldisasters/story/0,7369,1303680,00.html

Cubans today evacuated their homes and waited for Hurricane Ivan, which has gained strength, to hit the island with 260kmph (160mph) winds and a storm surge of up to 7.5 metres (25ft).
The storm, which has already killed at least 65 people in the Caribbean, picked up speed as it left the Cayman Islands, threatening to sweep across Cuba later today as a category five hurricane - the strongest on the scale.
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Cubans will have to face the hurricane, which has damaged around 50% of the homes on Grand Cayman and 90% on Grenada, without hope of aid from the US government.

The Cuban president, Fidel Castro, this week reiterated that he would not accept aid from the US, which employs an economic blockade against Cuba's government.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Charley last month, the US government offered $50,000 (£27,000), a sum derided by Cuba's official state newspaper, Granma, as pointless. The US president, George Bush, offered $2bn to help Florida in the wake of hurricanes Charley and Frances.

Mr Castro told Granma that his government had not accepted the money and that, this time, the US should "save themselves the hypocrisy of offering aid to Cuba".

"The only thing we can allow is a total end to the blockade and the economic aggression of our country. We are going to demonstrate that we are capable of resisting this hurricane as well - and others if they arrive - and how we can reconstruct the country with our own resources," Granma quoted him as saying.

Those resources will, however, be slim. An NBC correspondent in Havana reported that local residents had no plywood sheeting with which to cover windows, and no reserves of cash to stock up on groceries.

Car batteries that could be used to power a home sold out after Hurricane Charley, and electricity had still not been restored to some parts of the island following that storm.

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