HAVANA (Reuters) – Cuba began preparing on Monday for the predicted arrival of a strengthening tropical depression in the southern Caribbean Sea even as emergency workers are still responding to a nationwide blackout and hurricane just two weeks before.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center said mid-morning on Monday that the depression would likely become a tropical storm, to be named “Rafael,” before grazing Jamaica on Monday night then slamming into Cuba as a Category 1 hurricane on Tuesday night.
“There is increasing confidence of steady strengthening until the system reaches Cuba or the southeastern Gulf of Mexico,” the Miami-based forecaster said.
The timing could not be worse for the Communist-run island, which last month suffered a collapse of its national electric grid, leaving an estimated 10 million people without power for several days. Many of the island’s residents still face hours-long outages daily due to generation shortfalls.
Hurricane Oscar made landfall in Cuba around the same time as the blackout, throwing a one-two punch that has sapped precious resources, in a country already suffering from severe shortages of food, fuel and medicine.
Authorities said on Sunday they had evacuated more than 66,000 Cubans from far-eastern Cuba, in Guantanamo province, ahead of predicted heavy rains and flooding early this week. Soils in the province were already saturated by flooding and damage from Oscar, the government said.
Plans were also under way to evacuate thousands of residents in Pinar del Rio province, on the island’s far-western end.
The government encouraged residents, many still largely without communication because of power outages, to dial a government emergency phone number to follow the storm’s progress.
The NHC said much of Cuba’s western half was under a hurricane watch, but warned that the storm’s eventual track over the Gulf of Mexico, towards the United States, remained uncertain.
The system is about 195 miles (310 km) south of Kingston, Jamaica, packing maximum sustained winds of 35 mph (55 kph).
(Reporting by Dave Sherwood; Editing by Rod Nickel)
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