Radio Cadena Agramonte emisiora de Camagüey
Havana, 1st place. Nov.- There are men and women standing up to the danger, exposing their lives to save others, making their own that phrase of the Liberator Simón Bolívar: if nature opposes it, we will fight against it.
Two days after Hurricane Melissa passed through, when recovery efforts should have dominated the headlines, in some parts of Granma province, people are still talking about flooding, the hasty evacuation of hundreds of people, daring rescues, and people who have saved lives thanks to operations carried out by boat or helicopter.
In a telephone conversation with the country's top leadership, after flying over the region in a helicopter, Brigadier General Florencio Navas Guevara, Chief of Staff of the Eastern Army, explained that the town of Río Cauto was surrounded by the gigantic flood, and that part of the railway line where some 800 people had previously been evacuated was underwater, so that for the moment it was impossible to repeat the operation.
On the other side of the telephone line, the President of the National Defense Council, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, insisted on acting as quickly as possible, sparing no effort or resources to preserve human lives and keep people informed. Move quickly with the helicopters, he insisted.
For her part, Yudelkis Ortiz Barceló, president of the Provincial Defense Council, told Díaz-Canel that a locomotive was en route from Camagüey, with the intention of evacuating approximately two thousand residents of Guamo and transferring them to Las Tunas, where some 1,400 people from Granma province had already been sheltered.
From those same FAR helicopters, which in recent hours have repeatedly carried out rescue operations, it has also been confirmed that agricultural plantations and hamlets have been submerged beneath the turbulent waters of the Cauto River.
The damage to the economy is enormous and also for who knows how many families, whose belongings were washed away or lie useless in the mud. But right now, the priority is to save people. (Text and photo: Granma Digital)
