Cuban officials view hurricane devastation

Cuban officials who travelled to regions hit by Hurricane Michelle have found vast destruction, with sugar mills wrecked, crops ruined and hundreds of homes destroyed.

But with whole communities unreachable by car or telephone, Cuba’s Communist leaders said they had no clear picture of the overall damage wrought when the storm’s 135mph winds whipped across the island on Sunday.

‘‘A total estimate of losses will be delayed several more days more because of the lack of communication,’’ the Communist Party daily Granma reported Wednesday.

Flying over central Cuba, authorities saw cane fields flattened by wind and piles of wood and straw that were once thatched roof homes.

Among the sugar mills that were devastated was the historic Australia Central, the place from which Fidel Castro directed government forces that repelled a CIA-organised invasion army at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, on Matanzas’ south coast. Hurricane Michelle roared into Cuba near the Bay of Pigs on Sunday afternoon.

International photographers on a government-organised helicopter flight over the region yesterday captured images of the mill, with large chunks of wood ripped away from its sides and roof.

The crocodile farm in Guama, a major tourist attraction near the Australia mill, also appeared to have suffered major damage.

Elsewhere, the once-towering red and white striped transmission tower that provided state television programmes across Matanzas province lay twisted on the grass and through the trees around the station.

The worst damage appeared to be in the central province of Matanzas and the northern part of Villa Clara province to the east, the newspaper said.

As Michelle headed further out into the Atlantic Ocean, the government announced a massive effort to restore electricity and telephone service to large areas of western and central Cuba that were still without service.

The government shut down power in Havana and across western Cuba as the storm hit on Sunday, saying it wanted to avoid accidents, and the storm knocked out telephone service in large areas.

Restoration of water, gas, transportation and other basic services, especially to hospitals, was also a priority, the government said.

The death toll remained at five yesterday - four people killed in building collapses and one man who drowned on the southern coast when Michelle hit the land.

Most of the more than 700,000 people evacuated before the storm were back home yesterday.

At least 45,000 homes and about 780 government businesses and industries were damaged or destroyed in the storm, along with at least 500 schools, 50 child-care centres and 180 medical facilities, Granma said.

It did not say how many were destroyed and how many damaged.

In Havana, where two million of Cuba’s 11 million residents live, at least 179 buildings collapsed and 1,200 trees were knocked down. The roofs of at least 1,550 homes were ripped off or severely damaged.

Authorities said ‘‘considerable’’ harm was done to agriculture, but that they would not estimate losses until they know more.

The storm clearly caused extensive harm to the crucial sugar crop in Matanzas province, where nine of 20 sugar mills were devastated and acres of cane were flattened by heavy rains and high winds.

President Fidel Castro insisted earlier this week that Cuba had enough money to pay for recovery efforts and keep state-subsidised programmes going.

‘‘Neither the world economic crisis nor the effects of the hurricane will stop the march of social programmes under way,’’ Castro said while touring central Cuba on Monday.

Before striking Cuba, Hurricane Michelle killed 12 people in Honduras, Nicaragua and Jamaica, where homes were destroyed and roads and bridges washed out.