By Ruth Morris
Havana Bureau

La Coloma -- Traveling by tractor, horse-drawn cart and dented Chevys, thousands of Cubans abandoned flimsy homes in low-lying provinces Thursday and made their way to shelters, while others prepared for Wilma's arrival.

Authorities said they have evacuated nearly 222,571 residents, many from coastal areas along Cuba's western tip. The entire fishing town of La Coloma in the Pinar del Rio province packed bread, cookies and clothing into gunnysacks and waited on curbs for government buses to take them to safety.

At one apartment complex, neighbors pushed a squealing pig up the stairs to the second floor, then tethered her to a balcony rail and left her a bowl of rice.

"The ones who live up higher help out, so the animal won't drown," said Daisy Contreras, the pig's owner. "Here, we take a lot of precautions. Even the animals are moved."

Contreras' mother, in a wheelchair, sat waiting for an ambulance to take her to the hospital, where Contreras would stay with her over the next few days.

Cuba is known for running a tight organization during natural disasters. Evacuation orders are strictly enforced and security brigades guard against looting. While most evacuees opt to stay at friends' homes, about 20 percent rely on state-run shelters, staffed by doctors and cooks and stocked with medicine and food.

Thursday´s evacuations were orderly and even cheerful, although some residents said they were afraid they would come home in 3 or 4 days to a changed landscape.

"This one will be dangerous. We have to be ready for anything," said Orlando Reyes, a wiry farmer. Along with his son, Reyes had just carried his television and his refrigerator from his wooden home to his neighbor's concrete living room where he would weather the storm among rice sacks behind shuttered windows.

As he spoke, a tractor pulling a trailer full of families passed by. Men and women carried mattresses, water and the occasional chicken. The sky began to spit rain. Others laid logs across zinc roofs, and sheds were boarded up. Tarps were thrown over perishable foods in storage houses.

Meteorologists expect the mammoth storm to spare Cuba a direct hit, but emergency workers said flooding posed a huge threat. State newscasts reported 15 reservoirs were overflowing. Another 21 were full.

"This is a low zone. People here are frightened, but they know what they have to do," said Livia Rodriguez, a physical therapist-in-training, who lives across the street from La Coloma's quiet bay. Her husband prepared to walk their four goats to higher ground.

"If you lose your possessions, you can get them back," Rodriguez said, "The human life can not be recovered."

Farther inland, officials opened a five-story boarding school to some 240 Cubans with no place else to go. Women mopped the floors while Dr. Raul Hernández made rounds.

"High blood pressure? Any diabetics?" he queried the room, jotting notes on a slip of paper. "Any children under 1 year?"

"It might be deteriorated but cannot be dirty," he said of the structure, which had electricity and running water but no showerheads.

Javier Gonzalez, a worker from the local fish processing plant, said he had evacuated five times before and enjoyed the time off to play dominoes.

"In other countries people have independent interests," he said. "If you own a coffee shop, you say, `I'm not going. My cups will get broken.' Here the government suffers the damage and the government does the repairs."

As Wilma headed toward them, hundreds of schools in the Yucatan peninsula were ordered closed Thursday and Friday, and many were turned into shelters. Airlines started canceling flights. At the Cancun airport, hundreds of tourists waited for flights or sought rental cars, taxis or ATMs.

Matt Williams and Jeff Davidson of Westfield, N.J., were going back to their hotel in Playa del Carmen south of Cancun after their flight to Fort Lauderdale was canceled. At the hotel, they faced a night in a ballroom.

Wilma's outer bands hit Haiti and Jamaica, where it killed at least 13 people.

The storm was expected to strike Cancun and its surrounding resorts and sideswipe Cuba early Friday.

Information from the Associated Press was used to supplement this report.

Ruth Morris can be reached at alisonrmorris@aol.com.

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