Hurricane Oscar and its devastating path in Cuban easternmost province

GUANTANAMO, Cuba, Oct 22 (ACN) Still flooded and not allowing the passage to adjacent territories, due to the flooding of the Sabanalamar River that drowned the main town, San Antonio del Sur remained at midnight on Monday, where Hurricane Oscar, later downgraded to a tropical storm, left a toll of six dead.

In Emergency, Imias and San Antonio del Sur, rescue and salvage efforts continue, led by the Revolutionary Armed Forces and the Ministry of the Interior in these municipalities of Guantanamo, where there are still inaccessible areas, said Miguel Diaz Canel Bermudez, President of the National Defense Council, on X.

Flooding levels in those territories reached historic records as a result of the heavy rains of the hydrometeorological event, which in San Antonio reached values of 355 millimeters (mm) of rainfall, of which 275 mm accumulated in three hours.

In Imias there are areas that had never been flooded before and now they are, and the waters are even reaching a meter high, informed Alis Azahares Torreblanca, vice president of the Provincial Defense Council (CDP) in Guantanamo, while speaking at a national meeting to check on the situation in the provinces affected by Oscar.

She pointed out that prior to the tropical cyclone's landfall, some 9,000 people had been evacuated in Imias and another 6,000 in San Antonio del Sur.

Azahares Torreblanca also explained that, preliminarily, the most severe damages are concentrated in Baracoa and Maisi.

Specifically, in agriculture, she pointed out that coffee is the crop that has been most affected. In plantain, she estimated that almost 50 % of the plantations suffered damages, figures that reach 70 or 80 % in Baracoa and Maisi and in the case of the Ciudad Primada, many trees are reported to have fallen.

Referring to the recovery of the electric service, she commented that only 10 circuits are connected, nine of them in the main municipality and one in El Salvador.