A desperate father is searching for his daughter and two grandsons, who were trapped on Sunday night by the sudden floods in the municipality of San Antonio del Sur, in Guantánamo, caused by the torrential rains from Hurricane Oscar.
In a video published on Monday by the profile La Tijera and circulating on social media, Noel Samón Méndez -Gallego- pleaded for help to find his daughter and grandchildren, who live in that coastal municipality in the south of the province, where several towns have been cut off due to severe flooding.
Guantánamo was the province hardest hit by the hurricane, which battered the eastern tip of Cuba for 25 hours after making landfall on Sunday afternoon near the city of Baracoa.
From the province of Santiago de Cuba, the gentleman stated that he was very worried and requested help and information to locate his loved ones in San Antonio del Sur, where he said "what has happened today has never happened before."
He shared unsettling details of the phone conversation he managed to have with his daughter in the early hours of Monday, until he lost contact with her.
"My daughter had to leave at midnight with the house flooded because it was momentary. Where the cold (refrigerator) was already floating and hitting the ceiling," he said.
“They had to leave urgently, they got into a house on the second floor, and the water was already reaching their feet, with a sudden rise that they couldn’t withstand. And then not a single emergency boat appeared,” she described in her account of the terrible moments her family experienced.
The man assured that he still did not know anything about his daughter's situation. "My daughter and my granddaughter, right? Two grandchildren who live there. I don’t know the situation," he remarked sorrowfully.
“The government didn’t show up anywhere” in that “critical situation,” he reported. “I was calling for help with the firefighters, to see if a boat would show up. Nothing, no boat appeared.”
The father reiterated that he was unaware until then of the situation in which his daughter and grandchildren find themselves, due to the lack of communication with San Antonio del Sur and the power outages in the eastern region caused by the collapse of the electrical system, which had left the entire country without electricity since last Friday.
"There is no communication, there is no electricity anywhere, there is no internet communication... We are completely isolated," he emphasized, and pleaded for help to hear about his loved ones. "We need help, at least to be communicated with, to be informed, by any means..." he insisted, and before the video abruptly cut off, he said: "And they cannot be killed."
Hurricane Oscar made landfall in Cuba last Sunday as a category 1 on the Saffir-Simpson scale with winds of around 130 km/h. Although it downgraded to a tropical storm while moving over the eastern region of Cuba, it left a trail of destruction, with Guantánamo province being the most affected.
The floods in the municipalities of San Antonio del Sur and Imías have been enormous, due to the significant rises of the rivers from the rains. The situation remains critical, despite the fact that the cyclone left Cuba on the night of this Monday.
The government has reported that at least six people died in San Antonio del Sur -including a five-year-old girl- and one in Imías.
On Monday, the authorities announced that rescue efforts would continue, because there were areas that were still completely flooded, where access had not been possible.
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