Althouse: Flooding in Havana, after Irma.

September 11, 2017

Flooding in Havana, after Irma.

23 comments:

campy said...: Mother Nature thinks they voted for Trump.; 9/11/17, 2:17 PM
buwaya said...: Remarkably little hurricane news came out of Cuba.

Some truly tiny little islands with a thousand or two inhabitants have had intense coverage, but not the 11 million Cubans, in spite of this hurricane running along the whole length of the country.; 9/11/17, 2:21 PM
OGWiseman said...: My sister lives in Havana. I was there a few months ago. So sad to think how much will be washed away, especially with how much the city and its infrastructure were already crumbling. The Cuban people are creative, resilient, and amazing, but everything the government does there is so roundabout, half-assed, and snarled with bureaucracy, I really worry about how they'll recover from this under communism.; 9/11/17, 2:35 PM
California Snow said...: @buwaya - they have the best healthcare in the world so no one's too worried about them. They'll be fine.; 9/11/17, 2:35 PM
Howard said...: It's because we hate the Cubano commies more than the NorKs.; 9/11/17, 2:36 PM
Curious George said...: That's because Cuba is a shithole. The "before" pics are worse than everyone else's "after."; 9/11/17, 2:40 PM
Michael K said...: My son's brother in law is at Guantanamo and they had little damage, I hear.

His wife, who could have had quarters with him, stayed in Tampa and had to flee with her two little kids to Orlando.; 9/11/17, 2:57 PM
YoungHegelian said...: Things were crappy in Cuba even when the Soviets propped them up by buying their sugar at wildly inflated prices. Then, the Soviet Union fell, & hard times became even harder. Venezuela later stepped in & helped them out with heavily discounted oil. Now, Venezuela's broke & doesn't even have oil for its own needs.

The Cubans then discovered that in a Caribbean full of beautiful beaches & well-run resorts, that tourists just didn't go for bad food, anemic service, & crumbling infrastructure.

This hurricane will be just one insult to the body politic of Cuba that the Cuban people will have to suffer, & just make do. There's nobody there to help them. Who would have thought that Cuba would still be communist long after Albania had gone western.; 9/11/17, 3:09 PM
Michael K said...: Blogger Howard said...
It's because we hate the Cubano commies more than the NorKs.

The left never ceases to amuse.; 9/11/17, 3:19 PM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: There was flooding in Havana, I took a little risk.; 9/11/17, 4:17 PM
Phil 314 said...: Yes, but did they save the old cars!; 9/11/17, 4:29 PM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: As long as the Kamala Harris/Barack Obama/Fidel Castro /Hillary Clinton Family blood bank is safe, life it good for Cubans.; 9/11/17, 4:31 PM
Fernandinande said...: I love the way they're so in touch with nature and swim in their street clothes as if the water were a second home.; 9/11/17, 4:41 PM
David said...: Did they look defeated or worried? Did they sound so? The water came up and did some damage, most of it repairable. The water will go back down and the damage will be repaired, though probably slowly and imperfectly in Cuba.. My hometown of Pittsburgh had a huge flood in 1936. NYC flooded from a storm a few years ago. Large parts of Chicago were destroyed by fire. San Francisco was swallowed by an earthquake. Much of Florence flooded 40 years ago. The major cities of Germany and Japan were heavily damaged by war in the past century. Every oil well in Kuwait was aflame after the First Gulf War. Lisbon was once destroyed by an earthquake, as were much of Charleston. Atlanta, Columbia and Richmond during the Civil War.

Except in some of the cases where humans were deliberately killing other humans, most of these examples involved minimal to moderate loss of life. The disruption was great and there was fear and suffering. But even the worst of these were not the catastrophic end of any of human s society in these places. Politicians and even political systems were overthrown in consequence of the events, but the people rebounded, rebuilt and in nearly every case improved on what was there before.

Only war and conquest have wiped out entire civilizations, and even then something else takes its place.

We live in the age of glorification of the individual, and because of that these events are presented as terrible disasters. They are disasters for some individuals. But humans as a group are astonishingly resilient. We are not invulnerable or invincible, but it will take a lot more than what nature routinely throws at us to put human society into retreat.; 9/11/17, 4:42 PM
harrogate said...: Grateful that this storm didn't live up to our worst fears, saddened at all the lives it destroyed. Godspeed to the recovery of Cuba, like everywhere else hit by this hurricane.; 9/11/17, 5:11 PM
Lyle said...: YouTube took the content down.; 9/11/17, 5:52 PM
Ann Althouse said...: They just withdrew the embeddability. Notice the link in the space. It gets you through to video.; 9/11/17, 6:05 PM
Lyle Smith said...: Thanks Ann!; 9/11/17, 6:17 PM
Michael K said...: " saddened at all the lives it destroyed. "

One American life. Five others were auto accidents, etc.

Cuba , who knows.?; 9/11/17, 8:31 PM
Rusty said...: They say it's going to cost the US over 2 billion dollars to recover from Irma. On Cuba however they only need to raise twenty six bucks.; 9/12/17, 5:53 AM
Curious George said...: Raúl and the gang will have that place shipshape in no time. Just watch.; 9/12/17, 7:52 AM
harrogate said...: "One American life."

True and we are lucky for it. How many in the Carribean were either killed or displaced? And then of course Cuba.; 9/12/17, 9:27 AM
donald said...: Glorification of the individual? Really? How? Why don't you flesh that one out a little bit.; 9/12/17, 9:30 AM