In a rare request, the Cuban government has asked the Biden administration for a helping hand with immediate assistance to help the devastated island nation get through the dire consequences of the impacts of supercharged Category three hurricane Ian.
Cuba has been under economic sanctions since Donald Trump overturned President Obama's change re-engagement policies in the decades-long economic sanctions against the communist regime. Trump's return to isolating Cuba policies, even labeling our southern neighbor as a terrorist state, is still in effect. Cuba wants to improve relations with the United States and has said so at the United Nations just days ago. However, the harshest sanctions and terrorist state labels are still in effect. Perhaps this catastrophic storm can finally bring the opposing parties to negotiations to repair relations.
The storm hit the island very hard. The landfall was in Pinar del Rio province, primarily a rural area famed for growing the tobacco for Cuba's cigars. The entire power grid for eleven million people is down. Structural damage has been severe due to ferocious 125 mph winds and heavy flooding from 20 inches of rain. The storm surge was twelve feet. The roofs of homes were torn off, windows shattered, and Havana suffered severe damage.
Cuba is amid an economic crisis, and Ian will only add to people's desperation and flee the nation while braving the currents of the Florida Straits in a raft. Putin is mired down in Ukraine and will not be offering assistance anytime soon.
I believe the sanctions against Cuba should be immediately lifted so the nation can get the aid necessary to rebuild. It isn't kind of otherwise. Republicans, of course, are losing their effing minds as usual. It's what they do; the cruelty is fun for them.
Cuba's electrical grid - decades-old and in desperate need of modernization, has been faltering for months with blackouts an everyday event across much of the island.
But officials said the storm had proven to be too much for the system, provoking a failure that shut off the lights for the island's 11.3 million people.
"The system was already operating under complex conditions with the passage of Hurricane Ian," said Lazaro Guerra, technical director of Cuba's Electricity Union. "There is no electricity service in any part of the country right now."
He said the union would work through the night and into Wednesday to restore power as soon as possible.
The countrywide blackout added insult to injury for exhausted Cubans.
Mayelin Suarez, a street vendor who sells ice cream in the provincial capital, called the night of the storm's passage the "the darkest of her life."
"We almost lost the roof off our house," Suarez told Reuters, her voice trembling. "My daughter, my husband and I tied it down with a rope to keep it from flying away."
Cuba had been offered aid by the United States after previous high-end storms, but they rejected the offers of assistance for help after Hurricanes Michelle, Charley, and Wilma.
Responsible Statecraft argues that Ian gives the two countries a second chance to bury the hatchet. I suspect the administration is already negotiating and working out logistics to help the Cuban people. People GQP, not the government.
Hurricane Ian is just the latest in a series of body blows that have left the Cuban economy prostrate and Cuban people suffering the worst hardship since the decade-long depression following the collapse of the Soviet Union the 1990s. President Donald Trump’s tightening of the embargo and COVID-19’s closure of the tourist industry deprived Cuba of vital foreign exchange currency, leading to shortages of food, medicine, and fuel. The January 2021 unification of Cuba’s dual currency and exchange rates touched off triple digit inflation, eroding people’s real incomes.
This year, Cuba’s decrepit electrical grid, plagued by poor maintenance and obsolete equipment, has been operating at just 50 percent of capacity, causing rolling blackouts since April. In August, lighting started a fire at Cuba’s Matanzas oil base, the island’s largest oil storage facility and depot for receiving oil imports. The fire burned out of control for five days, consuming four of the base’s eight large storage tanks, millions of dollars’ worth of oil, and knocking the depot out of commission for the indefinite future.
When Cuba put out a request for international assistance to battle the fire, the initial U.S. response was positive. On August 6 and 8, the U.S. Embassy put out public statements offering condolences to the victims, reminding U.S. organizations that they could legally provide Cuba humanitarian aid, and offering U.S. technical assistance. Vice Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossio responded with “profound gratitude” to those who offered help, including the U.S. government.
Unfortunately, things went downhill from there. The Biden administration decided it was too politically risky to offer material assistance. The United States ended up standing on the sidelines while Mexico and Venezuela helped Cuba extinguish the fire. Recriminations followed. Havana complained that after offering help, Washington had provided nothing. The State Department insisted that Cuba had never made a formal diplomatic request for assistance. Washington missed an opportunity to be seen by Cubans as a good neighbor, and even Cuban critics of their government complained bitterly that the one country that could have helped the most did nothing while Matanzas burned.
President Biden will be in Puerto Rico, bearing sixty-seven million dollars in additional aid. He will not be throwing paper towels. Biden will visit Fort Myers, FL, tomorrow. Funding will come through through" the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law "to shore up levees, strengthen flood walls, and create a new flood warning system to help Puerto Rico become better prepared for future storms", a White House official said on condition of anonymity."