BY SHIRLEY PEÑA AND RACHELE FRUIT
MIAMI - During its devastating five-day sweep through the
Caribbean, Hurricane Georges hit the region's three most
populous islands along with smaller islands in the eastern
Antilles. The official death toll was more than 300. Initial
figures on damage to agriculture and local infrastructures run
in the billions of dollars, and the toll in the livelihood of
millions of people is only beginning to be felt. As the storm
left the Caribbean it clipped the Florida Keys on its way up
the Gulf Coast to Louisiana. The hurricane was a natural
occurrence, but its social impact varied tremendously,
especially between Cuba and the other Caribbean nations. While
no area that fell in Georges's path was spared, the island of
Hispaniola - where 15 million people live in the Dominican
Republic and Haiti - suffered disproportionately.
Government officials in the Dominican Republic alone reported around 200 deaths, and some 800 are missing. On September 28 the Wall Street Journal quoted an unidentified U.S. agency as saying the death toll might exceed 500.
In some areas, entire villages were swept away by overflowing rivers. More than 200,000 people remain in shelters.
Much of the country has been left without electricity, and government officials estimate it will take weeks to restore service, especially in the rural areas.
Losses to the Dominican Republic's infrastructure and agriculture alone are estimated at $3 billion, more than the nation's entire operating budget for 1998. Some 90 percent of the nation's crops were wiped out, including basic products such as rice, plantains, yucca, coffee, and sugar. Two major sugar mills collapsed.
Paltry U.S. aid
U.S. officials said Washington has provided the Dominican
Republic with $500,000 in relief aid, and plans to spend a few
million dollars altogether. In contrast, the Dominican
community in New York alone has already provided 24 ship
containers of donated food and clothing, with more on the way.
The government of Dominican president Leonel Fernández is
asking international bankers to reschedule the country's debt
payments. The Dominican Republic has a foreign debt of $3.5
billion.
The Dominican government has been criticized for failing to give adequate warning to the country's population. Newspaper editorials said that both the newly appointed civil defense chief and the head of the National Meteorological Office failed to issue warnings, arguing that they didn't want to alarm people. Critics have also blasted the television and radio stations for carrying only sitcoms and music until after the storm arrived.
A specialist in the meteorological office, speaking to the Associated Press on the condition of anonymity, said that he warned his bosses of Georges' potential 72 hours before it hit. One broadcaster at the office defied his supervisor's orders and broadcast a warning the day before the storm, but it failed to reach most Dominicans.
Medical personnel in the region have sounded the alarm over the potential of a second wave of devastation to workers and peasants in the storm's aftermath. Dr. Angel Alamazar of the Red Cross said, "People are up to their chests in water. Others have no clothes, no medicines, and the children are beginning to get sick with diarrhea."
Dominican medical authorities have warned about the imminent risk of epidemics such as dengue, due to the lack of safe drinking water, accumulation of garbage, and widespread flooding.
Thousands of people are standing in long lines for drinking water. With water in short supply, many are forced to fill their containers from the Ozama River.
As Domingo Osvaldo Fortuna, 51, filled a jug with river water, a reporter asked whether he was worried about diseases. Osvaldo angrily replied, "Of course."
From Santo Domingo it was reported that 3,000 prisoners in the Victoria Federal Penitentiary took to the roof to save themselves when the prison flooded. Authorities claimed that inmates used it as a chance to try to escape, which prisoners deny. "People were trying to get to the roof so they wouldn't drown and were shot," reported prisoner Jacques Matos Medina. Col. Luis Manuel Tejada of the prison's security scoffed at the prisoners' reports of 15 inmates being killed by the guards.
Haiti: price for decades of exploitation
In Haiti, more than 90 people have been reported dead and
another 60 missing, while close to 150,000 have been left
homeless. The threat of the Peligre hydroelectric dam breaking
prompted the government to open the dam's floodgates, causing
the Artibonite River to overflow. This has placed another
300,000 lives in jeopardy.
In the Dominican Republic and Haiti, many of the deaths were the result of substandard housing that could not endure the storm's winds and flooding.
Flooding and landslides, exacerbated by decades of deforestation, account for most of Haiti's confirmed deaths. While only a relatively small number of homes were destroyed in Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, Cite Soleil, the area's largest slum, home to 500,000 residents, was inundated.
Currently 40,000 acres of farmland is under water and 80-85 percent of the food crops destroyed. This is in a country regarded as the poorest in the Americas. Health officials fear outbreaks of cholera and typhoid, given the country's poor sewage system and current lack of potable water.
So far, Washington has offered Haiti some water, food, bedding, and clothing. The United Nations Development Program has offered a paltry $100,000, and the German government pledged just $95,000. The Haitian government has scraped together only $130,000 to aid hurricane survivors.
As in the Dominican Republic, the problems faced by workers and rural toilers in Haiti has been exacerbated by the government's refusal to prioritize disaster response services. An illustration of this is in Port-au-Prince where hundreds were left stranded in water more than a meter deep. Additionally, at the country's main hospital, injured were left lying on the hospital lawn, with no shelter set up to protect them from the 20 inches of rain that fell on Haiti.
Homere Jacques lost four relatives when the walls of his home collapsed. He told reporters, "The Red Cross told us to call the firemen, but the firemen told us they only had one vehicle available."
Florida: bring your own blanket
In a Miami Herald article titled "Supplies out of reach for
S. Florida Poor" several Miami workers explained the problems
they faced preparing themselves and their families for the
possibility of a hurricane without the money necessary to buy
supplies.
Georgia Brown, spokesperson for a Miami homeless shelter, explained that "When a person is homeless or severely poor, they are at the mercy of the shelter they go to."
Groups that many working people look to help during times of natural disasters, like the Red Cross, said that while they would provide "basic staples," anyone who comes to a shelter must "bring their own drinking water, non-perishable foods, and bedding."
Cuba's response quite different
The repercussions of the storm were quite different in Cuba.
Despite the fact that Hurricane Georges hung over Cuba some 36
hours, only five fatalities were reported. Even the Miami
Herald conceded September 25 that "Cuba's meticulous civil
defense preparations were expected to keep casualties down."
As of September 26, Agriculture Minister Alfredo Jordán told Cuban television that there had been "major damage" to the coffee, plantain and banana, tobacco, sugar cane, cacao and vegetable crops in eastern Cuba. Some 1,000 houses were reported destroyed or seriously damaged and 20,000-25,000 more were less seriously damaged.
As the eye of Hurricane Georges pulled away from the north coast of Cuba into the Florida Straits on Friday, September 25, 1,000 delegates gathered in Havana for the fifth congress of the Committees in Defense of the Revolution (CDR). In his speech opening the congress, which was broadcast on Cuban radio station Radio Progreso and could be picked up in Miami, Fidel Castro spoke of the circumstances in which three people died during the storm from contact with live electrical wires. Two others drowned.
About 200,000 people were evacuated in the eastern provinces of Cuba. They included thousands of high school students attending rural schools or volunteering for the coffee harvest, families living in flood-prone areas, and all foreign tourists. Even cattle were moved to safer ground. Castro explained that "... here no one is evacuated by force. They are secure in that no one will be abandoned or forgotten. Even if revolutionaries have to risk their lives to protect them." Castro called for aid from the international community for the people of the Dominican Republic.
Shirley Peña is a member of International Association of Machinists Local 368. Rachele Fruit is a member of IAM Local 1126.