"It was pure terror"

Those are the words of Evangelina Torres, quoted in a BBC report, describing the experience of hunkering down in her kitchen as category 4 Hurricane Gustav passed through her town, Paso Quemado in Pinar del Rio province.

Her roof held, but thousands of others were not so lucky.

A short note on the homepages of the Catholic diocese of Pinar del Rio and the lay Catholic magazine Vitral calls the province a “disaster area.” It reports no loss of life from Hurricane Gustav, but cites government reports that 80 percent of the province’s housing was damaged or destroyed. That’s 90,000 houses, described in this Reuters report.

An AP video showing the damage is here. An appeal for aid from independent journalist Miriam Leiva is here.

The European Union, Spain, Russia, and Venezuela have all offered or are planning to send aid. Americans are rightly concerned about our own victims of this hurricane. Still, I see no sign that the United States will help Cuba’s victims, but I would love to be wrong about that.