With the earthquake the Civil defense in Santiago of Cuba shakes

By: Juan Carlos Hernandez Hernandez
Director APLOPRESS.

Santiago of Cuba, 27 of March - (www.miamiprogressive.com) The past 15 of January of 2010, in an article published by our news agency alerted that: “The earthquake of Haiti, in Santiago of Cuba, is a warned tragedy.� Nevertheless, until this Saturday 20 of March, it was not had brings back to consciousness of that reality, when an earthquake of magnitude 5,6 in the scale of Richter seeded the panic to a large extent of the Eastern population.

The experience demonstrated fragile of our infrastructure and little capacity of our centers of services, that in the first minutes colapsaron:

104 MARKING (Service of Urgencies) - WITHOUT TONE
105 MARKING (Body of Firemen) - WITHOUT TONE
106 MARKING (National Police) - WITHOUT TONE

The telephone companies Etecsa S.A. CubaCel S.A. played bad a past one to them the santiagueros during the seismic movement.  The telephones - fixed and cellular - automatically stopped working. The minutes of disconnection to these vital services, put in risk the lives of several people, who thanks to the neighbor solidarity, friendships and relatives in time managed to be transferred to the different hospitable centers from the city.

A young conductor, who without firm nerves and hands to the rudder of a Moskovich, with his respective internal metamorphosis, appealed to everything sumaestría at full speed to get up to the street Gas holder, trying to arrive at the Guardroom, guardhouse about the Military Hospital. He knew that on its ability the life of a human being depended, a man hurt by a landslide in his own house. Nevertheless, he can consider themselves with luck, because others with less luck, moved in wheelbarrows, wheelchairs or simply on foot, all with equal intention, arrive at the Military Hospital, “Dr. Joaquin Duany Castle�. 

Thus we saw arrive at lady, with the united eyelids and at the speed that their old extremities allowed him, while it showed through his torn and humid clothes the erratic rate of its heart. The wind approached a melody to us different and stormy, that soon it became like Earth moaning, asking account to the mortals.

Infarcts, nervous pressure high and crisis, were some of the affections diagnosed by the galens, who were themselves surpassed by the incessant arrival of people in search of aid. In spite of going in his aid the doctors of the rooms, they could not avoid that colapsara the capacity of answer of the something, Guardroom, guardhouse that also happened in other hospitable and policlínicos centers of the city. The amount of people was remarkable whom they preferred to return to his homes, without to have received the medical services.

While this happened in the hospitals, another group of people threw itself for the parks, shouting and asking Mercy! The park Turfs filled, the Abel Santamaría, the 26 of Julio, the Mars Normal one, Place, the Tree-lined avenue, all filled of people.

To the all this local authorities they remained without answer, something that drew attention of Raul I castrate in its visit to Santiago of Cuba, when it said: “The international experience indicates that where an earthquake takes place great part of the local leaders they are overwhelmed As always�, looking for to put in other people's land what finishes happening in its own land. Here the greater preoccupation of the authorities was the decision of the population concentrated in the parks to refuse to retire to its houses. The transcendental thing not only is in the disobedience, but also in the terror of the system to the multitudes nonprogrammed.

The proximity from our province to the fault of Haiti that accumulates great energies in the zone of the Caribbean makes conscious that irremediably the Earth will return to shake here in Santiago of Cuba. The authorities have announced that the retorts will stay of more low intensity during 30 days or more. Something that can be very dangerous, because it demobilizes the people, turning the seismic incidences into something routine.

Similarly Raul indicated to inform to the population on the damages, but to do it of reasoned and sensible form, without stridencies nor sensationalism. Everything because he knows that the government does not have the capacity nor the will to solve the damages caused by the earthquake.

The lieutenant colonel Gustavo Alvarez Matos, head of the Organ of the Civil defense in the province, informed that several public facilities of health, education, culture and the commerce and the gastronomy, among others, had suffered damages of crackings and fissures in their structures, as well as 316 houses and 19 buildings in the municipalities of Santiago of Cuba, From Soria Palm, Foreman, Notch, Songo the Mayan, Second Frente and Guamá. Nevertheless, in the houses the data is not real at least, because an inventory of the damages has not been realized.

The presence of executives of the CENAIS in televising and radial programs informing to the town constantly of the measures to take in each case has been the answer to the infinite questions of the population. The Civil defense has put all their emphasis in preventing that the panic spreads, something that from the earthquake of Haiti the 12 of past January is in psiquis of each santiaguero. Nevertheless, specific directions have not been put in practice, as the preventive pamphlet distribution with instructions for each case and norms; as well as exercises and maneuverses in each house, schools and centers of work, etc.

The order word, by our security and the one of our families, who the Civil defense in our territory, does not return to stagger and that the prevention is not only task of the Municipality of Opposition of Santiago of Cuba, but of all the authorities and each of its inhabitants.