The powerful hurricane Ike moves away from Cuba on Tuesday due to the Gulf of Mexico after leaving four dead, tens of thousands of victims, 2.6 million evacuees, towns under water, houses and buildings in rubble and razed large areas of cultivation.
Ike, with winds of 120 mph, category one (maximum of five), is located in the southeast Gulf, where it could become "a major hurricane," after leaving Cuba for the north coast 120 km west of Havana, reported the National Hurricane Center in the United States to 00h00 GMT on Wednesday.
Although he left Cuba, strong winds from the devastating cyclone still feel in Havana, who was paralyzed, without work, transit and trade, with its 2.2 million people locked up under guard, without light or drinking water.
Ike, 66 victims who joined the more than 600 dead in Haiti to leave the cyclone Fay, Hanna and Gustav, caused four deaths in Cuba and in its journey from east to west swept tens of thousands of houses, buildings, crops, trees, energy networks and communications.
Electricity poles, traffic signs, traffic lights and downed trees or inclined by force winds were observed in the streets of Havana, traveled alone for any patrol that by loudspeakers warned of the need not to go.
"Everything is trance. We feel that is flying around out there, sheets of zinc in the air and I heard trees that fell," narró to AFP a housewife for 49 years, sheltered in his home in the Vedado neighborhood.
Giant waves hit against the Malecon. Some 250,000 people were housed in Havana, thousands of the historic quarter-World Heritage Site, where it was feared collapse of old buildings and houses in poor condition.
"Although there remains the danger away from the rains that can be strong and locally intense in some areas" and still cause flooding, meteorologist Jose Rubiera warned on Tuesday night.
Before going out to sea, Ike punished with severe flooding and gusts of up to 300 meters peoples of the north coast of Pinar del Rio, where more than 160,000 were evacuated and where ten days ago crossed Hurricane Gustav.
During his tenure with the West, Ike also affected Matanzas, which evacuated 13,000 tourists from resort of Varadero, the main tourist attraction.
The cyclone was the 14 provinces of Cuba under maximum alert, with 2.6 million evacuees, after entering on Sunday, a first time, with strength in the eastern Holguin 3.
Almost the entire country was in darkness for damages in electricity infrastructure and the deactivation of service for safety.
By improving the climate in the east came into the recovery phase of destruction. "Only in Holguin there are 87,424 houses affected, of whom over 37,000 totally destroyed, over 3,586 hectares of agricultural plantations affected," said first secretary of the Communist Party in Holguin, Miguel Diaz-Canel.
Buildings and houses were left in rubble by floods in Gibara, coastal town of Holguin. In the streets of the eastern Camaguey water reached four meters.
Chaparro, a town of 51,000 inhabitants in the eastern Las Tunas, was about to be wiped off the map, and in Baracoa, Guantanamo, far east, the waves reached five-storey buildings and floods washed away with everything in its path.
Also, Ike forced the Cuban authorities to stop "temporarily" the production of nickel, the main export product, as reported by the Ministry of Basic Industry.
The president of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva, gave the ruler of Cuba, Raúl Castro, sending aid to Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, expressed solidarity and offered assistance Mexico.
United States proposed sending experts to assess damage, as it had done after Gustav, but that first time in Havana declined the offer, according to the Department of State.
A tropical storm warning applies to the keys of southern Florida before Ike, threatening the oilfields of the Gulf of Mexico, an area that already suffered a Gustav, which trajectory similar to the current cyclone left a hundred dead in Caribbean and the United States, mostly in Haiti.
In the Dominican Republic, caused by persistent rains that Ike what keeps 17,000 people displaced from their homes and nearly 100 people incommunicado, reported the emergency operations centre.
