• USA The wrecked building in Miami, completely demolished

After hitting several Caribbean islands and leaving at least three dead, Storm Elsa struck Cuba yesterday, a punishment that will last almost two days before continuing its course towards Florida, in the southeastern United States.

The Cuban Institute of Meteorology (Insmet) indicated that at 2200 GMT Elsa was located at sea "90 kilometers south of Santa Cruz del Sur, Camagüey", in eastern Cuba.

"Elsa is heading northwest at about 22 km / h, with little change in intensity. She maintains maximum sustained winds of 95 km / h," he added. As she passed through Hispaniola,

Elsa left two dead in the Dominican Republic and fifty homes affected.

A 15-year-old boy died in the Bahoruco region due to the fall of a wall and a 75-year-old woman also died when her house in Bani collapsed, according to the Emergency Operations Center (COE). "My house is impenetrable by water," Mayra Tejeda, 50, a resident of the Moscow neighborhood, about 24 km from the Dominican capital, Santo Domingo, told AFP. "Everything is surrounded by water," added this woman, who lives there with a child with special conditions.

The water level in his home, he says, reached about 90 centimeters.

A third person died in Soufriere, on the island of Saint Lucia, in southern Martinique, the local Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) reported late Saturday.

Haiti, while very vulnerable to the inclemencies of nature, did not report deaths or "serious damage", although there were crops affected, said Jerry Chandler, director of Civil Protection in that country.

The United States National Hurricane Center (NHC) canceled alerts for stormy conditions in Jamaica and some parts of Cuba.

But it kept them in effect for other areas of Cuba and the Florida Keys.

Cyclone alarm

For its part, in Cuba, the Civil Defense decreed a "cyclonic alarm" for 11 of the 15 provinces, where for several days work has been carried out in anticipation of the damage that the meteor may cause.

"Heavy showers and rains are reported over Granma, Las Tunas, Camagüey, Ciego de Ávila and Sancti Spíritus," said the Insmet.

People were also

evacuated from

coastal communities due to marine penetrations.

"Some 700 residents of Júcaro, on the southern coast of Ciego de Avila, were transferred to safe places," reported the Cuban News agency.

Elsa arrives at the most complicated moment of the covid-19 pandemic, when the Caribbean island of 11.2 million inhabitants accumulates 204,247 cases and 1,351 deaths since March 2020.

On Friday, Elsa became the

first hurricane of the Atlantic season

with winds of more than 120 km / h, although on Saturday it was downgraded to a tropical storm. It is the third cyclone that Cuba faces during the pandemic. Last November it was hit by storm Eta and in August 2020 by Hurricane Laura, without major damage in both cases.

This was not the case in September 2017, when Hurricane Irma affected 13 Cuban provinces for 72 hours and left

10 dead in addition to 158,000 affected homes

and 14,000 building collapses. According to coincident forecasts, Elsa will border the southern coast of the island this Sunday to "get closer to the center of Cuba tonight." On Monday, "Elsa is expected to move through central and western Cuba and head toward the Straits of Florida," the NHC noted. "A gradual weakening is forecast to occur tonight and Monday as Elsa moves through Cuba. After Elsa emerges over the Straits of Florida and the southeastern Gulf of Mexico, some slight strengthening is possible," he added. In South Florida, the storm could bring precipitation,floods and strong gusts of wind.

In Surfside, near Miami, authorities demolished the remains of the building that collapsed last week with a controlled explosion on Sunday, leaving 24 dead and 121 missing.

The decision was made to prevent Storm Elsa from knocking over what was left of the structure in a more violent way.

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