Update: Over 100 thousand houses damaged by Ian in Pinar del Rio

CUBANEW/ACN 

01 OCTOBER 2022

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PINAR DEL RIO, Cuba, Oct 1 (ACN) More than 100 thousand houses were affected in Pinar del Río, in one way or another, by Hurricane Ian, a category 3 in the Saffir-Simpson scale (out of a total of five) that left a trail of destruction in the province.

According to Andrés Marín, provincial director of Housing, this figure represents about 60 percent of all houses and the main damages are to the roofs, taking into account the high percentage of light roofs existing in that Cuban western province.

Ian's strong winds were strongly felt in this area, with reports of significant gusts, the highest of 218 kilometers per hour in the municipality of San Juan y Martínez.

Today, the 103 offices of procedures -one in each defense zone- are working to speed up the survey of the damages, to finish quantifying them and to bring the resources to the victims, said the official.

Pinar del Rio presents a complex situation since it is one of the provinces with the largest number of houses pending construction from previous years' tropical cyclones, more than six thousand.

He assured that one of the strategies in Pinar del Río is now to promote the local production of construction materials, especially for the manufacture of water storage tanks.

Housing is one of the main problems caused by the hurricane, in addition to agriculture and electrical and telephone services.

In a recent recovery check-up meeting, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic, insisted on working urgently on the issue of housing in Pinar del Río due to the magnitude of the damage and the number of homes that have not been recovered from past events.

I propose that we do everything we can do without going through the phase of temporary facilities, because there are people who have been in temporary facilities for up to five hurricanes and have not just had a strong home. Those temporary facilities - he said - are the first ones that fall down with the winds, according to the national press.

Likewise, René Mesa Villafaña, Minister of Construction, referred to the shipment to the province from various parts of the country of trucks loaded with cement, in bulk and in sacks; tiles of different types; wood, wire rod, lace, among other materials to undertake the reconstruction in the shortest possible time.