To be honest, this hadn't even occured to me. But Cuba is hit by hurricanes all the time, right? Yet you never hear about thousands of Cubans dying or see images of corpses floating down the streets of Havana.
And, I mean, this is Cuba. This is clearly a country that doesn't have our resources. And hasn't quite "figured it out" as a nation, you know? If your country is internationally famous for cigars, horse meat and prostitution, you've got some fucking problems. [Okay, and Desi Arnaz and plantanes and the Buena Vista Social Club.]
Huffington Post blogger and PR woman Linda Cronin-Gross chimes in with an interesting little post about how Cuba dealt with Hurricane Dennis a few months back. I'm not sure as to the veracity of this post. She's claiming that Cuba was able to manage a massive hurricane without much trouble, which seems a highly specious argument to make. But until I hear otherwise, I will assume she knows what she's talking about.
It was going to be a pretty severe storm, Hurricane Dennis, so 1.7 million people were evacuated.
Only 1.3 million people, for perspective, live in New Orleans, LA.
And Cuba managed it. How? What magic secrets did they use? Here are a few examples:
- People know ahead of time where they are to go. (just like in New Orleans, right?)
- If there’s no electricity, communication about what’s to be done is maintained by “runners” who fan out from a main headquarters to central locations.
- People are not only evacuated; they know beforehand where they will go. And pickup and delivery of people is also arranged ahead of time.
- Cuban doctors evacuate together with their neighborhood, and already know, for example, who needs insulin.
- They allow people to leave with items such as TV sets and refrigerators, so that people aren't reluctant to leave because they’re afraid their most needed items will be lost or stolen.
You know, common sense policies dictated by the needs of the local population. Instead of guys going on TV and telling you to get the hell out. My roommate Nathan and I discussed this last night - how come there weren't constant free buses going all over the city shuttling people out? What's all this "hey, you really should leave" stuff?
As someone for whom living paycheck-to-paycheck is a daily reality, let me tell you...Even I, a white male from a solidly upper-middle class family, do not always have enough cash on hand to fill up my car with gas for a long trip. Granted, I have decent credit, but without credit cards...I'd be hoofing it on occasion.
But I'm a single, 20-something guy. If the call came down to flee Los Angeles - say if Mothra was headed our way - I'd do what needed to be done in order for me to get the fuck out of Dodge. But if I had a wife and a couple young kids? Or an elderly relative who couldn't make a long bus trip and needed insulin? Or all my money and life tied up in my home and the few possessions there? I probably wouldn't want to leave.
But in Cuba, I'd have had people banging on my door telling me the bus was on its way to ship me out of town. I'd have time to pack up some valuables, to make me feel a bit more secure. I could make sure my relatives had similar arrangements. And, you know, there's a free bus coming for me, and people who will notice if I'm missing.
It's obvious New Orelans had no such system. And it's not like this is some place that's never been hit by a hurricane before. Surely they had to know the possibility was out there?
And we're talking about Cuba here. Have you seen images of Cuba lately? It's not exactly a model of modern efficiency. [I don't want to harp on Cuba, which has been economically and socially ravaged largely because of a cruel American embargo, similar in result to the one we had in place in Iraq before just giving up on that and just bombing them repeatedly].
So no more of this "it's no one's fault...hurricans are just deadly..." stuff, please. Hurricane Katrina would have been devastating to New Orleans regardless, bringing about casualties and massive property damage. But the current humanitarian crisis there is shameful and unacceptable, and I don't think it's too early to start discussing what went wrong.
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