Although hurricanes cannot be prevented, catastrophic results like these can.
Cuba, a socialist country which is organized to meet human needs, has shown that it’s possible to carry out large scale evacuations with very little resources. Less then two months ago, 1.7 million people were evacuated on short notice in preparation for Hurricane Dennis.
In Cuba, both the pickup and delivery of people for evacuations is organized well in advance. The population is well educated about hurricanes, and they know where to go (and how to get there) in emergency situations.
The country’s leaders and knowledgeable meteorologists take charge, going on television and keeping the population informed. In case of power outages, there are special messengers who communicate evacuation plans to each area.
People go door to door to inform everyone of upcoming evacuations, and return to let them know when they have begun.
All shelters are staffed with medical personnel and family doctors evacuate along with their neighborhoods, knowing who needs special medicines (such as diabetics and asthmatics) and bringing them along in sufficient quantities. Veterinarians evacuate animals and items such as televisions and refrigerators are brought along so that people don’t stay behind in attempts to protect them.
If all else fails, people can be evacuated to high schools in the countryside which contain built-in dormitories.
Because of measures like these, made possible by Cuba’s social revolution, the last category 4 hurricane to hit Cuba left only 16 dead – the highest death toll in forty-one years(!) in an island constantly bombarded by hurricanes.
But in the U.S., a capitalist country where profit rules over people, evacuations like these are not only not planned for, they are in fact blocked!
Airlines stopped flights to New Orleans twenty-four hours before they had to, only because it wouldn’t have been profitable to fly airplanes with no passengers on them.
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