Reply #19: Not the greatest : 4 dead, hundreds of buildings down

[KamaAina]

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040814/wl_nm/weather_charley_cuba_dc_2

HAVANA (Reuters) - Cubans used machetes to hack away thousands of uprooted trees blocking Havana streets on Friday after a night of roaring winds from Hurricane Charley brought chaos to the blacked-out city.

Four people died during the hurricane, two of them crushed under collapsed houses, one hit by a palm tree and one man who drowned in the port of Mariel, Civil Defense official Lt. Col. Domingo Carretero said on a television newscast.

Charley's 105-mph winds destroyed 1,129 houses and caused the partial collapse of another 1,200 in the Cuban capital and the surrounding countryside of Havana province, Carretero said....

On Cuba's south coast, where Charley made landfall just after midnight, storm surges caused flooding, and hurricane winds left standing only 12 of the 300 houses of the fishing village El Cajio, government-run television said.

And you can imagine what their chances of receiving any aid from their neighbor* to the north are...