Hundreds of Homes Lost, Thousands Without Power

By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service

HAVANA, Nov. 5 -- Blowing through Cuba on its way to the Bahamas Sunday night, Hurricane Michelle killed at least five people, destroyed hundreds of homes
and left thousands of Cubans without water, electricity and telephone service.

Civil defense officials said today that the storm, with winds estimated at 130 mph, apparently did the most damage in the Matanzas and Santa Clara provinces on the
island's north coast, about 50 miles east of Havana.

Officials said building collapses were responsible for one death in the industrial city of Matanzas and two more, including that of a 98-year-old woman, in the town of
Jaguey Grande. A fourth person drowned in floodwaters in the southern beach of Playa Larga, at the northern tip of the Bay of Pigs. A fifth person was killed when a
building collapsed in Havana, which was still without electricity and water service tonight.

Officials said at least 23 houses in Havana collapsed in the storm and that more of the city's aging buildings could collapse after they dry and turn brittle.

Officials stressed that conditions in some parts of the island are still unknown because downed telephone lines made communication impossible.

Government workers with heavy machinery and neighborhood patrols with machetes began cleaning up today. Many streets in downtown Havana were partially
blocked by fallen trees and large, downed limbs. In several places, police routed traffic away from streets fully blocked by huge palm trees.

Many billboards featuring revolutionary slogans were blown to bits in the storm. Several of the newest, post-Sept. 11 billboards, "Against Terrorism and Against
War," lay in tatters along the roadside.

Michelle killed at least a dozen people in Honduras, Nicaragua and Jamaica. Although the death toll known so far was limited in Cuba, winds blew roofs off houses,
reduced wooden homes to kindling and caused heavy flooding across the center of the Caribbean's largest island.

Television news reports said that the town of Corralillo, about 100 miles east of Havana in Villa Clara province, was among the worst-hit. Video footage showed
extensive damage, including a sports stadium whose corrugated-metal roof had been completely blown off its concrete supports. But no deaths or injuries were
reported there; commentators credited extensive evacuations, including all the patients from a local hospital.

President Fidel Castro told reporters Sunday that at least 750,000 people had been evacuated as the storm rumbled northward from Central America. Most were
still out of their homes late today. That preparation, the product of Cuba's highly organized socialist community structure, was touted as the reason the death toll
remained relatively low.

"I think the organized, disciplined actions of the Cuban people prevented worse damage," a civil defense official said in an interview on Cuban television newscasts,
which carried continuous coverage showing downed power lines, flooded sugar cane fields and destroyed buildings.

"When it comes to these kinds of things, the Cubans are well organized," said Martin St. Pierre, a resident of Montreal who was visiting Cuba. "If this kind of thing
came through some other countries, 10,000 people would have died."

St. Pierre said he and others walked around Havana just after the storm passed through and witnessed flooding at least a block inland from the famous Malecon
seaside boulevard. But beyond that, he said, Michelle seemed to have caused relatively little damage.

Castro met Sunday night with Canadian and European tourists sleeping on mattresses in hotel lobbies in Varadero, a beach resort east of Havana near the center of
the storm's path. Castro said the hurricane had damaged Cuba's agricultural crops. "It's another blow," he said. "But it would have been worse if it had passed over
the capital."

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