Cuban president aware of measures to deal with earthquakes in eastern region

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel established communication with the authorities of the territories affected by the occurrence this Sunday of two high-intensity earthquakes in the east of the country where reports of damage are being processed.

The Cuban president, who heads the National Defense Council -- activated by Hurricanes Oscar and Rafael -- telephoned the leaders of those provinces and assured them of the support of the central government in the face of this other natural adversity.

Even without precise data on the damage caused by the 6.0 and 6.7 Richter scale earthquakes, recorded by the National Center for Seismological Research (Cenais), the television program showed photos of walls and roofs collapsed by the intensity of the earthquake in Santiago de Cuba and Granma.

According to assessments by the top political leaders of those provinces, Beatriz Johnson and Yudelkis Ortiz, respectively, calm prevails among the residents, while they evaluate the real impact of the earthquakes in the municipalities.

Ortiz assured the news program that it is known that in some territories of that province there were landslides, and partial damage to the walls of houses.

For her part, Johnson from Santiago acknowledged the experience of that population, the one with the greatest seismological instability on the island, which abandoned the tall buildings of the city and concentrated in open public areas of the city of more than one million inhabitants.

Both leaders urged people to comply with the provisions established by the Cuban Civil Defense for these circumstances, which, among others, indicate maintaining discipline and receiving information through official channels to avoid false alarms.

Further south in the east, it was learned that the Guantanamo residents also took over the lower areas of buildings and homes in anticipation of other aftershocks of the seismic events of this Sunday.

For his part, the director of Cenais, Enrique Arango, explained that the events were felt in the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, Jamaica, Haiti, and the United States Minor Outlying Islands.